It would be very interesting to learn whether there's a correlation between people's attitudes on book-cover-view and their learning styles (visual, verbal, auditory,
etc.). I suspect that many geeks like us are strongly verbal (that is, learn best from the written word), and that the people who respond better to the cover view are more strongly visual.
Anyone want to do a real user-study? It's probably publishable in an HCI* conference!

On the down-side, you'd have to do all the human-subjects paperwork.
Xenophon
*HCI is
Human-
Computer
Interaction in this context.