Dates comprises 29 chapters, contributed by 62 authors from 12 countries, and an index. The book is arranged in four sections: Production, Processing, Food and Medicinal Value with 11, seven, five and six chapters respectively. There are 21 colour pictures.

Each chapter stands alone without cross-referencing, so there are duplications and contradictions. While the book does not claim comprehensive coverage of dates in agriculture and commerce, there are unexpected omissions. As examples, in the section on production, there is a chapter on tissue culture and another on a genome project, yet there is nothing on conventional breeding; pests are covered but not diseases; fertilizers and irrigation are covered but not general agronomy. Elsewhere, the coverage is uneven, thus in the section on medicinal values, the topics are the date palm in the Holy Scriptures (fascinating), the potential functional value of dates, dates in traditional medicine with part of one chapter and the whole of another devoted to Ayurveda, an Indian system of healthcare, and investigation of the potential of dates as protection against Alzheimer's disease.

The book is well laid out and presented. There are difficulties with the usage of English, including spelling, which lead to ambiguities in meaning. Some data are presented with spurious accuracy; for example the contributions of individual varieties to national production totalling 231,000 tonnes are quoted in hectograms, and in other tables the reader is left to guess at the tests of statistical significance. Some chapters are bespoke reviews, some are adaptations of lecture notes and others are adaptations of research reports. Overall, the book summarises a vast amount of information, so specialists in dates will need access to it.