If the OP is able to provide a comprehensive answer, something entry level would be appreciated. I looked at the Wikipedia page and, yes, the information is all there but some real world examples explained simply would help to explain why it's important. Any article starting with the phrase "[an] algorithm for supervised learning of binary classifiers" is by definition not for layman and probably assumes quite a lot of prior knowledge on the subject.

@cjs Mainly for the same reasons that dave mentioned - questions like these pull down the overall quality if you get too many of them. That said, my thinking was "I really want to find this book, so do I post a vague question on a good forum, or not find the book at all?". Plus, I do think these kinds of books have value and I hate the idea that they've pretty much disappeared. I have so many old computer books that give an almost perfect snapshot of the time and culture but are now woefully outdated, most people don't know or care about them, and wouldn't understand why you'd want to read it.

I'll just add that I would not have asked the question if the book wasn't a good one or one that I thought was worth finding. I agree with @dave that these kind of questions can be overly vague, not relevent to 99.9% of the community and (somewhat) pointless; personally, I think the "I vaguely remember this game" questions off-topic for RC.SE because there are better places for them i.e. MobyGames, DOS gaming forums, etc. The difference with my question is that there seem to me to be a lot of "lost" books from that era and RC.SE seemed like an obvious place to ask for help.