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From the book Mastering Regular Expressions, 3rd Edition:

The story that is the first six chapters form the basis for the last four, covering specifics of Perl, Java, .NET, and PHP. To help you get the most from each part, I've used cross references liberally, and I've worked hard to make the index as useful as possible. (Over 1,200 cross references are sprinkled throughout the book; they are often presented as --> followed by a page number.)

I can't make grammatical sense of the first sentence. It seems that the subject is the story. The rest reads that is the first six chapters form the basis for the last four, covering specifics of Perl, Java, .NET, and PHP and seems to be a dependent clause. But where is the subject's verb? ...actually, the sentence is very confusing.

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    Definitely a confusing sentence without commas, and it should be forms not form. The story, that is the first six chapters, forms the basis for the last four, covering specifics of Perl, Java, .Net, and PHP.
    – CRABOLO
    Oct 29, 2014 at 3:48
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    I think we're going to be seeing quite a few questions from this book, because the writing style is terrible :)
    – ColleenV
    Oct 29, 2014 at 4:38

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The story that is the first six chapters form the basis for the last four, covering specifics of Perl, Java, .NET, and PHP

Subject is story and the main verb is form, and it should be forms to agree with singular story. This would make it somewhat clearer.

The text "that is the first six chapters" is a clause qualifying story. The clause ends after "chapters."

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It's actually less a qualifying clause than a (crazy, hyphenated) noun:

The story-that-is-the-first-six-chapters forms....

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