That book is about teaching Haskell, not advertising it. If I wanted to advertise how cool Haskell was, I probably wouldn't dwell on lists. But to learn Haskell, I spent the first few years doing either list processing or very simple algebraic data types, and I think it made me a better programmer as a result.
If you want to program Haskell, get the basics sorted. Once you have sorted the basics of functional programming, you can move on to the Haskell specific bits. The course I learnt from at York left out things such as modules, type classes (beyond slight Eq/Ord signatures), monads, IO (other than interact) and anything not in Haskell 98. What it did cover very well was functional programming and functional reasoning.
Of course, after teaching these bits, say towards the end of a course or in a Real World Haskell book, the extra Haskell bits should definately be covered! They are what makes a Haskell programmer, but not what makes a functional programmer. Thanks Neil