Actually, Bruce Eckel goes over this in "Thinking in C++". Stroustrup chose not to use an object-based hierarchy, where everything inherits from one base class

Actually, Bruce Eckel goes over this in "Thinking in C++". Stroustrup chose not to use an object-based hierarchy, where everything inherits from one base class (like in Java and Smalltalk). This presents a problem when making generic containers (that is, a container that can hold any type of object). To solve this, generics (in the form of templates) were added to C++.