The very first thing which appealed to me was the somewhat quirky, but highly effective method of laying out the ingredients and procedure for each recipe which typically appears on the left side of a two page spread dedicated to each dish. The translators have done a serviceable, albeit somewhat gross translation of metric measurements into familiar English units. I can't complain too much about these, as even the equivalencies in Patricia Wells' excellent books are often off by about 20%. But, in the world of savory cooking, 20% difference doesn't mean a whole lot.
The next feature that impressed me was the dual table of contents that cross-referenced all the recipes by both primary ingredient and by type of dish. This is really a very European thing, as I see it much more often in French and German books than in books written by Americans.
Other especially good features were the basic advice and basic recipe sections. The basic advice has not nearly enough content to come even close to being a tutorial on cooking, but it does include a few rare pointers centered on taking your time, paying attention to taste, and being organized. The basic recipes are not just your typical stocks and vinaigrettes,

as Monsieur Bras' recipes require several unusual pantry preparations.
There are some less common but still familiar preparations such as beurre noisette, pate brisee, pate sablee, Italian meringue, and French meringue. There are also some preparations I have never seen before such as aigo boulido, gomasio, grilled lard, huile rance, kefir, long jus, short jus, and nougatine.
Some of these preparations are simply unfamiliar names for common cooking techniques. Gomasio, for example, is simply toasted sesame seeds crushed with sea salt. Some preparations are totally familiar to every cook, yet they are generally thought of as nuisances, such as milk skin, that skin that forms on the surface of heated milk.
I should also soften my judgment that the recipes in this book are totally impractical for the home cook. There are many ideas here which, with a fair amount of practice, can turn up on your table when you entertain to impress.

Many other recipes also start with very common ingredients to give us fried bread and Mediterranean tuna with a presentation which would knock the socks off of the most jaded brunch guest. But then, the author goes off the deep end by giving us recipes requiring Banyuls sweet wine, venison, potimarron squash, demerara sugar, candied orange, and juniper berries to yield a leg of venison with licorice-like lemon puree. The presentation of this dish, like all the others, is a knockout.
The texts surrounding the recipes are a combination of childhood memories and somewhat mystical ruminations on things that inspire the chef's cooking. It does give us a look at the substance and inspirations of French haute cuisine. And, unlike Charlie Trotter's book `Raw', it is not totally impractical.