Reading some of the preview material at Amazon, the chapters often start with brutal depictions of violence against African American slaves. I get no sense of the purpose of these passages; they don't appear to be taking a stance in anyway, just quoting from old sources.
The only charitable interpretation I can think of is something along the lines I remember Asimov writing about: humankind always uses slaves; they stop when it's economically viable to use machines instead. And in a way automata theory is a very general theory of abstract machines which we use to substitute human labor in many ways... So maybe he's giving a visceral reminder of the importance of the subject matter at hand (automata theory)?
Additionally, the table of contents does look interesting. I've read Sipser, and I'd now be interested in this different angle on the subject (Sipser felt more isolated from other parts of mathematics; this starting out by connecting to semigroups for instance seems interesting)—but that said, it's just too bizarre:
Its 'Chapter 0,' titled "Mathematical Preliminaries," opens with a full-page passage of the sort I described above. To give the flavor, here are a few lines included in it:
"... Who are generally presented, being secur'd by Bastias or negro drivers, And instantly tied Up to the Beams of the Plaza, or a Tree, Without so much as being heard, When the flogging begins, men, women, or children, without exception, on theyr long naked bodies, by long hempin whips that cut round at every lash, and crack like a pistol, during which they alternately repeat Dankee Massera, /Thank You Master/, but while he stalks up and down with his overseer..."
—and on and on. wtf.
The next page is the standard sort of presentation of mathematical notation you'd expect.