Overall I think your response is rather damning of what is a much better book than "Perl and XML" from O'Reilly, and given the choice of the two I'd pick this book any day.

I agree. I wasn't impressed with O'Reilly's Perl and XML either. I thought it's examples were far too simple and it spent too much time on trivial issues while only providing far too brief discussion of the important points.

XML and Perl is definately an improvement, despite what opinions people many have on the DOM :)