Not only the book "needs to be taken down from its pedestal" but it's time for the C language itself to go. It was fine language at the time (better than assembly I guess). No more. Not in the 21st century. The most common excuse for sticking with C is efficiency - I pity those who still believe so. Another excuse is extended set of libraries - http://go-lang.cat-v.org/pure-go-libs, when Go was publicly released?

That is, stop writing books about C and start creating new languages.