Ah, the heart of project management. This chapter was kind of comforting - seeing that PMI recognizes that some of the work is fuzzy but that people management is critical to project success.
This is where I spend a lot of time (even presenting at PMI conferences on Emotional Intelligence). The chapter does reference working with the team and the individuals, including motivational factors and team-building, which I find critical to a functional project team. There are also sections on more process-oriented facets of HR management, such as planning for required skills, negotiating for scarce skills, and building your schedule around the balance of who is available at what level of expertise when in the course of a project.
From beginning to end, HR management can be a bit of a shell game - there's a lot of decision-making, adjustment, and monitoring. It's interesting to see this all distilled into a few flowcharts, but good to see the people side being addressed.
For those folks who love the process and are not comfortable with the less-finite people side of the equation, the PMBOK has some good tips and pointers to ways to acquire and use the soft skills that help navigate this side of the equation.