Both this book and the preceding (smaller) edition have earned their place on my reference shelf. More up to date than Knuth's 2nd edition and covering much broader territory than (for example) Samet's D&A of Spatial Data Structures, I've found a number of algorithms and data structures in this text that have been directly applicable to my work as a systems programmer.
One of the major features of this book is, where possible, the consistent presentation and comparison of expected running times under a variety of input data conditions, with both theoretical and empirical results.
A very browseable handbook. Not one of the hundreds of 1st year textbooks. It's a shame that it's out of print.