Rating: 
Summary: Good Book for Starters
Review: I have been teaching Java and Advanced Java for the past 3 years at colleges and corporations. This book gives good examples on swing applications using the latest compiler SDK 1.3. It is easy to follow just like the first edition. There are 2 chapters that you can introduce Advanced Java topics. But you need another book, I recommend Horstmann's book, to fully cover Advanced Java. If there are more examples in real life or business, the book would have been perfect! yanyou@hotmail.com
Rating:
Summary: Good for beginners, something for experts
Review: An excellent criteria to apply to any book designed to teach a topic is that experienced teachers can find something to use in future lessons. Since I have taught Java for over three years and am currently teaching three sections using the JDK 1.3, I can humbly consider myself experienced in the language. There are two examples in the book that gave me the ideas for additional lessons that I have incorporated into my current classes.
However, that does not mean that the material is too advanced for beginners. On the contrary, the initial position and the movement is ideal for someone just learning the language. Some of the material that is new and improved in the JDK 1.3 is examined, although not in detail.
If you are in need of a book that will give you a quick overview of a language that you are unfamiliar with, then this book is a good choice if the language is Java. The examples are good, current and expressed in a form that is easy to understand.
Rating: 
Summary: If you're broke and you want to learn Java, this is the book
Review: Yes, you can learn the basics of Java from this book. Yes, you can easily understand the explaination of Java coding in this book. However, the lack of good examples and coding details in this book WILL NOT enable you to start doing your own programming in Java after reading this book. Worse, there are examples that don't compile successfully. If you want to learn Java programming seriously with determination to UNDERSTAND && KNOW HOW TO PROGRAM, please get Eckel's Thinking in Java &&/|| Savitch's Java: Intro to OO Programming. I've read Savitch's book, and it's great. I was the only one in my training class who has the book, and my understanding of Java is much proficient than my peers. I bought Eckel's because it covers some Advanced Java topics in it. Many readers recommended Eckel's book to me!
Rating: 
Summary: Good for Applets Only
Review: This book is outdated unless you're only planning on writing applets in Java 1 (for older browsers). Even then Internet Explorer 5.5 supports Java 2, and Netscape 6 will support Java 2. For learning to write full Java 2 applications I'd recommend "Java: How to Program" by Deitel and Deitel, and "Just Java" by Peter van der Linden.
Rating: 
Summary: Book Re-Use
Review: This book goes down very easily, the explanations of difficult concepts are quite good, and the examples are fun and demonstrative. However, it is clearly a barely updated version of the TY Java 1.0x book! They simply threw in some Caution! notes and changed a sentence here and there. Obviously, they were not diligent enough, because MANY of the examples contain deprecated code, rendering them useless. Chapters 12-14 are read-only unless you search for the appropriate JDK1.2 syntax elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Very easy to understand, but contains little material
Review: I was just reviewing Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Java" which is the complete opposite of this book, but I think they make a good pair of books to buy. This book was very easy to read, good examples, well written. However, SO MUCH was not covered. Even basic things! (If I'm not mistaken, even things such as Collections were not covered! As far as I can remember..) Every time I needed to master quickly a subject, I read the appropriate chapter from this book, and if I needed more information, I'd just glance at "Thinking in Java" which contains much, much more information. The problem exists in the subjects which aren't covered... But as long as you know the book's limitations, it's a good one, especially if you get another, more thorough, Java teaching book.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent tutorial for people w/ some programming experience
Review: I found this tutorial well laid out and easy to understand. The lessons have a lot of hands-on examples (with no errors in the code!), and move smoothly from simple to more complex concepts. The authors also do a great job of holding the students attention by adding lots of humor to the lessons (one lesson has you feeding a hungry Jabberwock). They also use real life situations to explain complex theories (using trees to explain classes and objects, or using LEGOs to explain Object-oriented programming). A complete novice might find the lessons a little overwhelming, and an experienced C++ programs might find them too basic. But for the other 80% of the population this book is a great learning tool.
Rating:
Summary: Good book for starters
Review: I found this book very helpful for starting out with Java. Its not verbose, a to-the-point nicely planned book. Though not all topics are covered (servlets for eg) but you can move on to other books for that. I would definately recommend this book for starters.
Rating:
Summary: Good rating for what it is
Review: This is really a good book on 'Introduction to Java'...Teach yourself Java in 21 days is a stretch. The book does a fine of job of covering the basic essentials of the language and object-orientation. It is by no means a reference book. I will read it to get my hands and feet wet with the language structure and do some basic examples and rely on other more focused and specialized books (swing, EJB, JSP, JDBC, Applets, Servlets, etc.) to get the more detailed coverage I need. I guess in a nutshell...get this book if you're getting started in Java and complement this book with others that are more specific to the areas you'll be working in.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Greats
Review: After reading some of the other reviews I thought this book was not going to be that good, but when i got it it was quite the opposite. This book contains all the java you want to know about and you don't have to have that much programming knowledge behind you (although it helps). There are good examples of code with line by line analysis. It is well set out and easy to understand. It would of been a bit better if they had supplied a cd with the java 2 sdk on it but you can't have everything
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