Rating: 
Summary: Good for Beginners Only
Review: Laura Lemay's work might satisfy rank beginners, but will not have much to offer for folks with much previous programming experience. Her examples are extremely simple and very short; she relies almost exclusively on "hard coded" variables within methods. I suspect that anyone trying to "teach themselves" will run into a world of compiler errors once they strike out on their own with more complex programs or variable usage. To really learn to code, examples on handling "real world" variables (particularly input from a user or even multiple instances of a given class) would be useful. She covers arrays in almost dangerously simplistic terms, and all but ignores the important topic of handling keyboard input, which is especially fussy in Java. Developing longer examples, with a little more complexity and functionality, would have been useful. Her Perl book was much better on this point.
Rating: 
Summary: Reasonably Thorough for the beginner
Review: The material in this book is reasonably good. All the source is set out, (which is a big plus since other "teaching" books don't) Lemay and Cadenhead describe go through the structure of the java langauge so you get a feel of how things go together in a java application. The complexity is low but there is a lot of stuff (876 pages, that's alot of dead trees!!) The SDK (1.2( is upto date. Other current books with SDKs usually go for 1.1.5 or something earlier. These guys have really made an effort to show you stuff. But again like any educational books out there on the market there are no exercises with solutions to help you take java out for a drive by yourself.... But they give you an extra 7 chapters (the authors call it a bonus week) most of which is a bit more advnced. Overall it is worth the buy if your serious about learning Java....
Rating:
Summary: Java book that switches over to HTML at the end week 1
Review: This book started off great, but then it expects you to have an understanding of html to continue on with day #7. If you don't have an understanding of web publishing in html stay clear of this book. Now I have to learn web publishing in html before I can finish the rest of this book!
Rating: 
Summary: A Java Book That Finally Teaches Like The Title Says!!!
Review: I have read a couple other Java books and even taken a course in the Lnaguage but nothing has allowed me to understand it more than this book. I went from unable to write 'Hello World' to being able to create GUI Layouts. This is an amazing book with well explained examples. I would also recommend XML BY EXAMPLE after reading this book, it is a nice spin to also understand XML in JAVA.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for Java beginners
Review: The Third edition of this book is teached at Gateway Community College (AZ). Be sure to buy the correct edition. This book is non intimating and fun to read. Pages are not long and you can go through it's one day reading in an hour. I found little typos in anything and exercises are easy to follow. You get a good feel of the Java language and like me you can start praising it to your peers. It's helpful, if you know a little programming especially in OOP. But don't stop from learning Java because you don't. Like this book quotes, learning OOP is like having your first beer. Take a few days off work and go to a secluded place with a laptop and learn Java and establish your future.
Rating:
Summary: Great book for programmers - especially C/C++ programmers!
Review: I bought this book because I wanted to learn Java and I liked Laura Lemay's "Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days." I knew C and a little C++ from doing some game programming and a class I had back in '96. I understand the flow and logic of programming in C and I was hoping I could carry it over to Java (since they are somewhat similar). This book took me step by step, chapter by chapter in understanding the true beauty of this language! It wasn't easy, mind you, but it wasn't overly difficult. If I didn't know C/C++, it would have been much tougher. I'd recommend complete beginner's go with the "Teach Yourself Java 2 in 24 Hours" book as some other reviewers have stated. If you know C/C++, this book is perfect! I'm glad I bought the book and it's going on my shelf for reference :).
Rating:
Summary: FINALLY, A GREAT JAVA BOOK COVERING JDK1.3 & CURRENT INFO!
Review: EXCELLENT BOOK! This is a new edition published in September 2000. It is a completely revised, updated and expanded version which covers the latest features of Java 2 including JDK 1.3. I found the Swing classes covered very systematically in the 4 chapters and particularly easy to understand. The book covers the Swing classes which are part of the JFC (Java Foundation Classes library) for adding graphical user interface. The information in Appendix is specially useful, informative and clear. The author seems to have taken special efforts to make us understand setting up of the PC for Classpath and Path, often a source of trouble if not understood and set up properly. The examples in the book are presented in a clear precise manner unlike in many other books on the subject which leave a lot to guess in the absence of supporting comments. Coverage of JavaBeans, RMIs and digitally signed applets is impressive. Overall, I would rate this book one of the best and a great value for your money! Vasant L. Abhyanker, IT Premier, email: itpremier@hotmail.com
Rating: 
Summary: too fast for the beginer
Review: I bought this book to learn Java, as a complete beginer to object oriented programming and a novice to programming. I bought it having used a sister publication - Teach youself Perl in 21 days. Which enabled me to learn Perl in a couple of weeks. After one week with this book, I found the going really tough - and decided it wasn't me but the book. I then bought Sams Teach Yorself Java2 in 24 hours. And within a few days had got to grips with Java 2. I'd strongly recommend the complete beginner to stay clear of this. There are other books that will get you up to speed much faster and more easily. Good luck Afam Edozie, London, England
Rating:
Summary: it's a good deal
Review: If you have no experience in programming this book should be the first one you pick up. Gives you a good start to learning the java programming language. It is not the all in one java book, so you should also pick up a reference book also for more in depth definitions, try the java bible. Remember this is just to get you started, and is a perfect chioce for doing so.
Rating:
Summary: Very good book for C programmers
Review: I am an experienced C programmer with some C++ and object oriented programming knowledge. For me this book was the best I could find in the bookstore. It was concise and came right to the point. I started reading this with a great enthusiasm and at the chapter 6 I already knew all the basics of a Java program. The examples in the book are complete and you can get them on a website. I can imagine that for the real beginners this book might be too fast but for C programmers who want to learn Java this book is excellent.
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