We included a few intro chapters so that people would be able to fully comprehend our examples. Think of them as pre-requisites.
Keep in mind Rails Recipes was written by the incomparable Chad Fowler and probably had five figures worth of editing over a much longer period of time.
Our focus from the start was to provide incredibly helpful and relevant code. If we had gone through pragprog the release would have been a few months later with less rough edges.
xoxo ngauthier
Also, a few of those recipes I wouldn't consider "after the tutorial" material judging off chapter title alone. Like namespacing and view templates which are covered and covered again across material from the likes of the PeepCode or BackboneScreencast tutorials. But again, that's just judging from chapter titles I haven't read it.
That said, it does seem very valuable but I think the price point is off compared to other books of that type, and other Backbone learning material.