Summary books like this are great as long as you know you're not an expert by the time you finish them. The goal is to let you know what you don't know, and to help you recognize a problem that would be easily solved by one of these languages (which would then spur deeper learning of the language).

Reminds me of one of my favorite books ever, Gershenfeld's "The Nature of Mathematical Modeling".

http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Mathematical-Modeling-Neil-Gers...