Could be, but with CSS - if you went through w3schools for basics of CSS and maxdesign for semantic mark up and styling, all you need is - practicing with test CSS templates keeping in mind modern ( as of 2009) browsers charts: in 4 years we "happily" got IE7 which now pushing away IE6 (with some revolutionary efforts of some designers:D). All use of CSS based on browsers support, bugs and all that.
So in all, don't buy this old book on CSS, there are plenty of new ones.
Thats a fair assessment.
I digest...