I find this book very useful, as predictive modelling with text is an important field in data science and statistics, and yet the one that has been consistently under-represented in technical literature. Given the growing volume, complexity and accessibility of unstructured data sources, as well as the rapid development of NLP algorithms, knowledge and skills in this domain is in increasing demand. In particular, there's a demand for pragmatic guidelines that offer not just the theoretical background to the NLP issues but also explain the end-to-end modelling process and good practices supported with code examples, just like

I believe that the book describes itself quite well when it says: Mathematically correct yet highly intuitive…This book would be great for a class that one takes before one takes my statistical learning class. I often run into beginning graduate Data Science students whose background is not math (e.g., CS or Business) and they are not ready…The book fills an important niche, in that it provides a self-contained introduction to material that is useful for a higher-level statistical learning course. I think that it compares well with competing books, particularly in that it takes a more "Data Science" and "example driven" approach than more classical books." "This text by Matloff (Univ. of California, Davis) affords an excellent introduction to statistics for the data science student…Its examples are often drawn from data science applications such as hidden Markov models and remote sensing, to name a few… All the models and concepts are explained well in precise mathematical terms (not presented as formal proofs), to help students gain an intuitive understanding."