Rating: 
Summary: A good choice if you have the right background knowledge
Review: The Struts framework is becoming a de-facto standard for developing interactive web applications using servlets. If this type of development is something you are responsible for, you should consider getting a copy of this book to help you take the next step in your professional development. The "kickstart" concept means that the authors don't spend a lot of time on fluff or auxilllary material. You are quickly exposed to the core concepts along with a large number of examples to illustrate those technical points.There are a number of assumptions made in this book. The web server used for examples is the Jakarta Tomcat server. If you're using that platform for your development, you'll be very comfortable with the book. The authors also assume a prerequisite knowledge of JSP, as well as the use of MySQL for writing applications that access data from relational databases. From a cost perspective, this is all good in that you can set up your test environment for free. On the other hand, if you use other packages such as IBM's Websphere Application Server and DB2, you'll have to make the adjustments on your own. The book is very comprehensive in what it covers, and there is an abundance of code to help you see working examples that you can use for your own purposes. Since I'm not as "up to speed" on servlet technology as I'd like to be, I'd prefer a somewhat slower style for learning. But that's not a knock on the book as much as my own personal preference. Conclusion
If you're comfortable with web applications, deployment, and servlet coding, this will be a good choice for getting started with Struts. If you're still relatively new to all this, you may want to get a book that doesn't assume quite so much to start with. Once you get familiar with Struts, this would be a good companion book for examples.
Rating: 
Summary: Doesn't quite cut it
Review: This book (like many of its type) reads more like a collection miscellaneous notes than a structured, organized text book. It is disjointed and incomplete. Moreover, it encourages bad practices (at least the examples do). The book fails to intelligently synchronize and present the relationship between the JSP page, the action class, the action form and the struts-config.xml. In fact, you never see the struts-config file (it's kind of important). The last straw came when I was reading a 4 line section about a particular tag usage. The authors offered this brillant insight - .."for more detail, refer to the Struts documentation"! Gee, thanks...maybe the authors should have given that advise in the introductory paragraph and left the rest of the book blank. The discussion of and and the mechanism to store and retrieve these data elements to and from the Action Form was ambiguous and misleading. Moreover, hard coding data elements in a Vector inside the JSP is just downright bad practice. The point of Struts is to minimize the need to put java / javascript code in your JSP.Overall, poorly organized, poorly written and not that useful.
Rating: 
Summary: If you're on a deadline, you need this book.
Review: This book fills a major gap in the Struts literature: it shows you how to solve real-world problems using Struts. If you want to learn the details of how Struts works, you need a different book. However, if you're sick of wasting an hour every time you need to figure out how to use an html tag you've never used before, this is the book for you. I'm learning Struts so I can use it to write a commercial application. I didn't buy this book until I had finished the first two modules of my app, and I really regret it. I remember wasting 3 hours one day figuring out how to use <html:select> in conjunction with <html:optionsCollection> to render a lookup table from my database. I'm pretty handy with Google, but the fact is, there's not a lot of solid information out there about how to use the Struts tag libraries. This book contains the exact code I needed - I could have copied it into my JSP and been on my way in less than a minute. It's obvious to me that Turner and Bedell struggled through Struts the way I did, and decided to write a book with all the answers once they figured the answers out. They did a fantastic job. They cover all the aggravating details you're going to face writing real apps, and they explain the solutions clearly and accurately. Bottom line: After reading the three major Struts books, I can tell you that none of the books alone will get you where you need to go. I recommend "Programming Jakarta Struts" for learning Struts theory, and this book for learning how to get real work done.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book
Review: This book is somewhat of a late arrival in the rapidly crowding Struts book market. Having purchased all of the other books published on Struts, I was somewhat reluctant to buy this book. I had the opportunity to browse through it at a local book store and decided to buy it anyway. I am glad that I did. The authors write in a very clear and communicative style. They apparently know what they are talking about as well. This combination makes it a very useful text. The authors also maintain a support web site for the book. I was having trouble installing certain components of the excellent freeware Unix tools "Cygwin." I wrote an email stating my problem the previous afternoon. In the morning, I got a detailed e-mail message from Kevin Bedell explaining how to go about correcting this problem and a hyperlink pointing to the desired section of the website. This is truely impressive! I just hope that more authors will take the responsibility of actively supporting their books like this. For me, it is money well spent. I highly recommend this text
Rating:
Summary: Clear, Concise and Practical
Review: This is a very well written book. It is specially useful for mastering the basics and medium level tasks.
It not only explains struts, but also web applications in general which is a big plus to build strong fundamentals.
The examples are very practical and the explainations and just as much as you need to master the concepts of Struts and understand the details. I highly reccomend this.
Rating:
Summary: Bharat Ruparel, Architect
Review: This is an excellent book on Struts 1.1. This book was a somewhat of a late arrival and I had already purchased "other" Struts books available. Therefore, I was a bit hesitant to buy it. But after browing through it at a local bookstore, I decided to buy it anyway. I am glad that I did, because it is very well written indeed. The authors write in a very clear and communicative style that is quite refreshing! It is apparent that they also "know" what they are talking about as well. Acutally, it is quite an eye opener for me. It is beginning to impress upon me the "awesome" potential of the "open-source" community. This book is entirely based on the open source software. Anybody who still has doubts about what the open source movement is should read and work through this book. The authors also maitain a web-site for this book. I was having trouble installing the "telnet" and "ftp" software from the "Cygwin" site and posted and e-mail. The next morning, I get a detailed e-mail from Kevin giving me the link to these utilities on the Cygwin site. This is very impressive! I wish more authors will take the responsibility of supporting their books like this. Overall, a worthy addition to your library if you do any work at all in J2EE world.
Rating: 
Summary: Many bugs, not helpful, book abandoned by authors
Review: This was the first book that I bought in order to learn Struts. I found that the text was generally unhelpful as it was written from the point of view of Struts 1.0x, whereas 1.1 invalidates much of what the authors talk about (you might as well rip out the chapter about validation and throw it away, because NOTHING in there is valid), assuming it wasn't bug-ridden anyway. The supporting website hasn't been updated since May, 2003, and the links to updated files are all dead (the chapter 3 hello program on the CD doesn't work, so you're SOL now). The ONLY saving grace is the CD. I suggest you look elsewhere for an introductory book; this book seems to be hacked out quickly to capitalize on the Struts phenomenon and just as quickly abandoned.
Rating: 
Summary: In sum , a decent book
Review: Well.. this book isn't bad, it is certainly a decent starting point fro somoeone interested in an introduction to struts, but
it is not a really good book either.
What I like about it: simple, practice oriented. What I do not like: explanations are not clear at times (what boggles me the most is that the most confusing part is on the use of the validator, an area in which one of the authors is a commiter..!). Also the style of the books is pretty much like this.. here are a couple basic notions and consideration about the new subject, here is a code dump of a toy application using these techniques, and finally a
really quick and superficial overviiew of the code. So apart from a few simple concepts the only way to learn something from this book is to go dig in the source code, and even so you learn only how to do that thing.. not how to do things in general..and that is not my idea of a good tutorial.
Also, I would have loved to see coverage of XDoclet to produce configuration files...
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