At first I couldn't stand this book. Every little section seemed to formulaically begin with someone else's opinion, a quote from some scholar or opinionator, as tho the author pulled a skillion little zingers out of years of reading and assembled them all as headings on every subject in the book.
Since reading Haskell's survey of the history of the Early Music Revival, I'm returning to this book and seeing it thru new eyes. The little zingers are still irritating, and the choice of musical examples (which you need to either own or track down or subscribe to) date the book (2007). But the premise is becoming more valid with every day as more and more performers are speaking this particular musical dialect natively and without coming to it from some other one (20C "classical" music dialect). The book addresses the full spectrum of issues in performance of the repertoire carefully and thoughtfully, especially from the basis of a long life of involvement with performance. So one finds chapters dealing with instruments, ornaments, sources, etc.
The point size of the font is very small, there is a lot of text to chew on and for middle-aged eyes it might be some work to do so, but give it a try. I believe the book is not intended for anything like a straight-thru reading.