Others say...

"Some good info"
Pluses:
*Invaluable explanation of how baby sleep cycles work. Specifically, a baby starts out in a very light form of sleep and is easily awoken. After 20 minutes s/he cycles into a deeper sleep mode and remains that way for about 40 minutes before starting the cycle all over again. What this means for parents: If you're holding or wearing a sleeping baby, you need to wait 20 minutes after s/he falls asleep before placing him/her in a crib - otherwise s/he'll probably wake up.
*An acknowledgment that many "sleep solutions" won't work for babies under 4 months. Honestly, when it comes to sleep in the first insane 3+ months, it's whatever works works. I liked the fact that Pantley listed a number of different activities to try in getting a newborn to sleep. I appreciated not being chided for failing to get my 2 week old asleep by putting him in his crib while still awake (the holy grail of all sleep advice!).
*The safety guidelines for co-sleeping are thorough and excellent.

Minus:
*The writing style is a little...amateurish. The friend who gave me this book said, "You'll discover some useful info in here, but you'll probably find yourself disliking the author." She was right. Pantley is obviously very proud of her parenting skills and as a result, sometimes comes off as rather smug. A lot of the "research" from this book is pasted together from other sources. And on the whole, this book could have benefited from another round of editing (someone needed to tell the author not to share that she's used the bathroom wearing a child!)

"Excellent!!"
For anyone who is looking for someone to tell them "DO THIS! IT WILL WORK IMMEDIATELY!" This book is not for you!

Pantley reminds you several times in her text that her ideas are gentle and are "designed" to work over time, not overnight. Although she does admit that if you stick with it and are as disciplined in your administration of her ideas as you wish your child to be when it comes to bedtime that you can see results faster. Pantley presents TONS of ideas and helpful hints on how to help your child get a better nights sleep with out traumatizing them or you! She presents her ideas in a well organized easy to read and understand manner. Her sleep logs are very helpful for turning a possibly chaotic problem into an extremely manageable one. This book is for everyone, from the parent looking to help their good sleeper sleep better AAAALL the way to the parent who hasn't had a single good nights sleep since day one. Her section on how babies sleep & their "normal" sleeping pattern was very informative and is key to helping you understand the hows, whens and whys of a child's sleep. This book is a wise purchase!

"Saved my life"
I was almost crazy when by chance or destiny I found this book on Amazon. I knew in my heart I could not let my baby cry-it-out. Yet, I was finding no alternatives and was really frustrated not being able to sleep at all. This book showed me the way to greatly improve my child's sleep while making her feel safe and loved. I am very thankful to Elizabeth Pantley for taking the time to share this so important knowledge. If you don't beleive in letting your baby cry - this book is essential for you.

"Not the most realistic."
I was hopeful that this approach was going to work for our little one. She had colic for the first 3.5 months and cried a lot. Therefore i was looking for a sleep approach that didn't require additional crying. We didn't start any real sleep "training" until 4 months. And bottomline... we have come to the conclusion, some crying must occur. I know that ALL babies are different, but this approach was not the one for us.

"Some great advice but............."
God bless you all for whom this book helped but it just didn't do the trick for us. I must admit that there is some great general advice in there but when I got this book I was desperate and needed help immediately, not a month to 3 months down the road. Ms. Pantley's advice is definitely gentle but very, very time consuming. She even says that it may take 30-120 days to work. Well, how much of that is the techniques or is the child just more developmentally ready to sleep better? If you have lots of time and are not at the end of your rope then give this a try but if you are desperate like I was then I don't think you should waste your time with this.
A little background: I am a stay-at-home mom and spent most days home alone with my baby. I ended up holding my child for every nap and co-slept with her as well. In addition, I nursed her to sleep every time. At this point my child never slept more than 3 hours at a time and usually only 1-2 hours........ for 5 months!!! The moment I put her down she'd scream so I just continued to hold her. I was so sleep deprived that I was going nutty. I knew I had to do something and I got this book b/c the thought of letting my baby "cry it out" absolutely broke my heart.
Well, I tried Ms. Pantley's advice for 2 weeks and I was seeing very, very little progress. I then decided that I just needed to bite the bullet and get the other popular books that were a little more "strong armed" and see if any of them seemed more practical. I gravitated toward those that were written by experts (and MD and PhD who actually work in the area of child sleep disorders), those being Dr. Ferber and Mindell. After reading both, I realized that the "cry it out" method isn't as cruel as it sounds and it was what I had to try. (In fact, I think Ferber's term "progressive waiting" more aptly describes the technique.) Well, I'm here to tell you that it worked just like they say- by day 3 it was drastically better! The most she ever cried was 45 minutes and that was not the screaming banshee I was afraid she'd be. After 2 nights she was pretty consistenly sleeping 8-9 hours straight.
I think that those of you who are at the end of your rope like I was really need to bypass this book and give the "progressive waiting" aka "cry it out" method a try. If it gets too bad, then stop, but give it a try at least. It was the best thing I did for my baby and me.