Has anyone else heard of this book comming out.

Amazon.ca

haven't heard of it but sounds interesting

comes february 27th in germany.

In which way is this official and who is Mike Duggan?

Hi, I'm Captain Obvious. It's official because it's published. Mike Duggan is a writer.

I think I'll reserve judgement until I see it. I hope it's not just devoted to building with the templates ...

Well from the short content discription it sounds like a combination of the Beginner Tutorial (WED introduction, MED introduction, SED introduction) and different 'Workshops' which use the template system.
They were available on the Download site but that was back in the A5 days.
Looks like they are not listed there anymore.
Examples: Special FX Workshop, Adventure Workshop and so on.

hopefully he didn't just copy those old tuts from the A5 version hihi

I have read the book. It presents more information about game design and less about 3d Gamestudio. It is well written but if you are looking for a guied that helps you with Gamestudio itself you will do better on the official website than with this book. Again it is good as a game design book, but for the price the title is extremely misleading less than a fourth of the book is gamestudio related and is less than a retread of what you can find with the tutorials and the AUM.

I must say I have been disgusted
Ok for an audience of very beginners it can be of some help but for the rest of us it is of no use at all
That's my opinion, at least