Incredibly obvious stuff here, unfortunately. Maybe this was valuable at the time, but it reads like some surface-level notes on the explicit themes in De Palma's filmography, without really digging into their implications beyond the narrative.

De Palma more than anyone uses the camera to ask these questions, examine and investigate and consider and complicate what it means to look or be looked at, how the gaze can be used, the role of the viewer and the one(s) viewed and how complicated and misleading those roles and images can be. The author seems vaguely aware of this, but doesn't give much time or thought to the movement of the camera, the edit, the structuring of a sequence, or anything outside of straightforward plot summary and the occasional mention of more obvious visual techniques (e.g. the use splitscreen, though this is under-examined).

This is more of a (poorly-written) timeline of his filmography through The Untouchables and then a few scattered notes on voyeurism, desire, doubling, inferiority complexes, and, most memorably, three separate instances where the author tried to get an interview with De Palma and was politely turned down. He does get a brief interview in around Wise Guys when he likely corners De Palma after a press conference. It is not a good interview.

I'm sure there are better books about De Palma out there, but I've only come across this one in person. At least the brief mentions failed projects were interesting. The initial Cruising screenplay apparently didn't take the maladaption angle that Friedkin (and, in Dressed to Kill, De Palma himself) used. And the whole Fire project, wherein a Jim Morrison type fakes his own death to avoid a (falsified) sexual assault charge set up during a performance by a disgruntled filmmaker whose wife cheated with him? It's a wonder that didn't see the light of day. That was a sure thing. No doubt in my mind that De Palma would've resolved his own inferiority complex and surpassed the cultural impact of Jaws and The Exorcist with that screenplay.

Among other suspect claims (and some very questionable sexual politics) on the author's part: Pacino's roles after The Godfather II "received little notice" until Scarface. De Palma's approach to sex is "very seldom gratuitous." Multiple projects failed to get off the ground (including a contest to co-write scenes in Blow Out) for, and this is a quote that comes up several times, "obscure reasons." 

There's also a page or two of fanfiction for some reason.