Rating: 
Summary: Don't waste your money and time.
Review: First, this book does not show how to use the .NET NGWS SDK. The code is not followed by any output. Second, the topic are so disorganized that beginners will feel lost no sooner that the first chapter. Third, the technology is not ready yet. It is still vaporware. Thing don't compile once you get sarted with MS docmentation. Things are incomplete all over the place. It's a total waste of time. Ask me? Come back after 6 months. May be they will have something solid. Please don't waste your time. thanks Jim
Rating: 
Summary: Great book on a great language
Review: Gunnerson's on the C# design team and know the language as well as anybody - and his experience shows in this really really nice book. This isn't a "quickie book" which is a rehashed white paper, like the book by Wille from Sams! At this stage it is hard to imagine a better book on C#. What about C# itself? First off you can get the language free as part of the .NET SDK from Microsoft's MSDN web site, it's a command line interpretor like the one in the JDK. Then use your favorite editor to create C# code. Next, although C# certainly bears a family resemblence to Java it has some truly unique and exciting features that make it the best language yet. For example, it is the first language in the C/C++ family to handle versioning. (For experts the fragile base class problem is gone.) There's also cool stuff like automatic conversion of value types to objects and back again and little things like == doing what it should for strings. All in all this is a great book that I highly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Complete waste of money
Review: Having already purchased Inside C#, I then obtained this book in hopes that it would be the "next step" for me in my learning curve. How wrong I was! Despite this book being from a "team member", it is actually much more of a beginner level book than either Inside C# or the Wrox book that I thumbed through in the store. People have already gone on about the thin nature of the examples as well as the fact that the examples seem to be written with nothing more than page count in mind. However, I guess I was expecting there to be some meat in the book anyway. Next time, I learn to read these reviews before shelling out my hard earned money on a book that truely warrants the only "1 star" rating I've ever given a book.
Rating: 
Summary: It was good when I bought it
Review: I bought this book a while ago. Days when MS announced C#, I wanted to get my hands on a book that can give me a head start. I saw this one in the market and bought it. This is a good book for those who want an "introduction", for advance stuff you will have to refer to some other book.
Even though I have professional C#, I still sometimes open Gunnerson's book for a quick look on a certain topic. He has done a very good job by keeping things simple.
Second edition of this book is out now. I haven't yet read it, but I belive that there must be some improvements. Deepak Kapoor
Rating:
Summary: The Standard
Review: I may have the dubious distinction of having read every published book on C# from cover to cover (well, almost). That said, this book was one of the first I encountered when I started learning C# (in its first edition, of course), and I still return to it several times weekly in its second edition (usually to clarify an exposition by another author). For my money, this is as good as writing gets when the subject is THE LANGUAGE, PERIOD. The writing style is lean, focused, and rigorously accurate. While you might not take it to bed with you, you'll turn to it over and over when you're actively stuck on a concept and want to get it right and OWN IT. A careful reader could gain all the confidence they need by reading this book first, and then Troelsen's *C# and the .NET Platform* (also an Apress book; no, I don't work for them). That's not to say that there are other gems out there (including Liberty (O'Reilly; download the latest version of the code!) and Robinson et al. (WROX; generally excellent, but some chapters are SO BAD, and the typos are EVERYWHERE). But if you have a limited budget and can stay focused, Gunnerson and Troelson (in that order) are all you need.
Rating:
Summary: Author lacks a strong understanding of OO
Review: In previous reviews I have read about this book, there have been many criticisms regarding the author's use of long examples (~ 100 lines) when 10 lines of code would have sufficed. The author would then make a minor change, and copy the entire code example again. Although this is very annoying, I have a far greater problem with this book: The author does not have a strong grasp of Object Oriented programming. It is very clear that he has little understanding of interfaces, which are a vital part of C#. The reason I say this is that in every code example I see, he explicitly "casts" classes references to interface references, when one is not needed (He states that this is required on pg. 80 that you must make a "cast", which is incorrect. Amazingly, he contradicts himself on pg. 128 when he states the "cast" is not needed). There are so many errors in chapter 10 (Interfaces), that I would highly recommend that the chapter be skipped entirely. His section on problems with "name collisions" on pg. 86 is so wrong that it is pitiful. Perhaps at the time the book was published, interfaces in the language spec. were pitiful and the author's examples were correct, but I doubt it. These are just some of the many examples used in this book that are either completely wrong, or highly discouraged. Others include using the term "overload" when the author clearly meant "override" (big difference!). Although I do like the author's style in trying to explain things, it doesn't help much when his understanding is incorrect. I have found that reading the "C# Language Specification" and "C# Programmer's Reference" (although dry) to be a much better use of my time. Note: I did read the 1st edition. I can only assume the author has fixed many of his mistakes in the 2nd edition, which might make this book a decent intro. to C#.
Rating:
Summary: True to its calling
Review: In the introduction to this book, Eric Gunnerson warns the reader that this is a book aimed at programmers. If you do not have quite a bit of experience programming, this is not the book for you. You would be better served by Wrox. While I am a bit more fond of the Wrox book, as it is much easier to read and has plenty of real world code samples, I like Eric Gunnerson's approach to covering every aspect of the language. This book is the most thorough book on C# in the market, and, if it were written a more casual tone, it would blow away any other book on the market. As it is, it is my number 2 book on the subject (Wrox's C# book is number 1 currently). However, if I want low level details, this is the first book I consult, so it has a definite place in my library. One thing I have seen this book criticized is for its lack of an overview. Come on now, this is a C# book, and it stays true to its calling. Faulting a book because you failed to find out what it's about amounts to an unfair attack. Having said that, if you are looking for information on the .Net Framework, look elsewhere. One thing of note. If you are low level enough that you can read through the .Net Framework help file and understand everything easily, this book may be a waste of time. For the rest, and for those of us who do not have time to decipher the spec, this book is the most detailed on the market and well worth the price. If I had to choose between the three books currently on the market, I would choose the Wrox book to learn, this book to understand and the Introducing C# pamphlet to start a nice cozy fire to read by. ;->
Rating: 
Summary: Reasonably good
Review: It covers lots of stuff(There are total 35 chapters) but poorly organized. To follow this book you have to learn class and inheritance(chapter 6), interfaces(Chapter 10) before you can get to statements(Chapter 12), operators(Chapter 14), or arrays(Chapter 16) and Strings(Chapter 17)
Rating:
Summary: Decent Introduction to C#
Review: Other than the fact that this book could have been better structured (everything is in the right order, but its broken up into way too many chapters - 36) and some of the presentation is choppy and sparse (heck, theres a chapter called "Other Class Stuff") - this is the better book to get acquainted with C# for the moment. The last 10 or so chapters are excellent - and for most experienced programmers, things are covered in detail where they need to be.
Rating:
Summary: A Waste of Money
Review: Provides no more information than is available free or at very low cost from numerous other sources online or in periodicals. Poorly organized and very poorly written.
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