I have not seen or read that book before, but I feel the need to point out to anyone checking it out that Chef is a rather open-ended tool and lots of people have different opinions on how to do it "right".  I'm always happy to see people using Chef in whatever way works for them, but please don't read something like this and think that his methods (chef-solo in particular) are the correct or even widely accepted best practices.  Conversely just because I dislike using chef-solo in production, don't think that means you shouldn't if it works for you.