Just picked this one up this weekend from the FLGS and love it. We're getting back into the game, playing through the Starterbook: Sword and Dragon system which uses a slightly simplified version of Chaos Campaign and takes you up through 3049, right to the brink of the Clan Invasion...making this book a perfect bridge. While it picks up the campaign in 3052, which is historically accurate for McKinnon's Rangers, it also accounts for setting things in the early clan invasion era. We're itchin' to move our campaign into it!
Incidentally, I know bits and pieces about IS's first contact with the clans, involving an Explorer Corps Jumpship that made one jump too far. I haven't read any of the novels from the clan era; which novel/sourcebook covers the events surrounding that initial contact with the clans in the greatest detail?