This intriguing and influential book explores C++ techniques on the frontiers of current practice. Most of the issues addressed concern templates and generic programming, such as a typelist template for passing lists of types to templates. It uses a CAR/CDR style to handle argument lists of indefinite size. There's a flexible smart pointer class based on pluggable policies that illustrates both the design space of smart pointers and the value of policies.

In the end, I have to wonder: isn't this getting too hard? It feels like Coplien's purple book, which notoriously shows amazing things to do with C++, if only one wanted to that kind of thing. I keep wanting to ask: if you need to go to these extremes, might you just be better off in Smalltalk or Common LISP?