Rating: 
Summary: Just what the title says
Review: The book certainly does justice to the title. My only complaint is that the book seemed rather light on details for the price. But if you're looking for a quick & dirty introduction to C#, the author certainly does the job.
Rating: 
Summary: A worthwhile upgrade to a good book
Review: The first edition of this book was for a long time the "only game in town" although it was hardly perfect (probably 3 to 4 *). But it was becoming more and more obsolete as time went by and much of the code didn't work under beta 2. Although I was reluctent to buy the second edition, I decided to and I am relatively pleased that I did so. It was pretty easy to read only the changed sections and the new chapters. The general coverage of C# has been beefed up and there a couple of really substantial examples that you can use as the basis of your own programs. It remains my favorite book for the C# language although the new Liberty book looks like it could be even better and I will be getting that one too.
Rating: 
Summary: Poorly done and very superficial
Review: The title says it all. This book looks like it was slapped together in a very rushed manner. There are 300 pages to this book and 30 chapters! Not only does that come out to 10 pages a chapter, but some chapters are literally (no joking!) 1 or 2 pages long! Add to that fact the following: Many chapters present a sample that is 100 lines long to represent something that could have been illustrated in a 10 line program. The author then make a single statement about an alternative and re-dumps the entire 100 lines of code with one or two changes! Needless to say there is absolutely no meat whatsoever to this book. Very disappointing since it was touted to be "the" C# book from a member of the design team.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book for C/C++/Java developers
Review: There are a couple of reasons of why I liked this book: A) Its NOT an interpreted 'copy and paste' from the MSDN white paper... This book is by a Microsoft insider who seems passionate about the technology (with good reason!) and explains the technology very well... B) Its not the same old .NET classes that have been examplified to death OVER and OVER again in all the confrences and at the PDC... I'm sure everyone that's played around with the .NET SDK and has noticed that a LOT of the classes in the documentation are missing or simply 'defined' with no usage notes. This book takes advantage of some of those classes and allows developers a chance to experiment more knowledgably with the SDK. Good COM section also.... (While the Visual Studio 7 Beta will surely come with an updated documentation packet on the Universal MSDN CDs, this book is still a great value...) Last noteworthy feature: Language comparissons... This section PROVES that the use of Java in a NON APPLET solution is a choice for Morons BY morons. (And that's coming from a Java developer!) Speed and sophistication are NOT an entirely bad thing for a programming language and in a large corporate enterprise application...(But Hey, no one ever said IT managers were bright! )
Rating:
Summary: Not as good as you wish
Review: There are lots of errors in this book. Some errors are even the
syntax errors. Maybe becuase of the version problem? I don't
know. I am using Beta2. I don't know currently there is any other good book in C#
or not. Since the language is still new, we may
cannot expect an excellent book for now.
Rating:
Summary: Adequate introduction, but many errors
Review: This book is a usable introduction. It is not a reference (as claimed on the back cover), the presentation is fairly imprecise, it is irritating that 1-2 page long examples are repeated verbatim when only two lines change, and there are many small errors throughout. But I actually learnt something from reading it, and especially from consulting the freely available C# Language Specification when puzzled by the presentation in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Superficial and smug
Review: This book is not a complete waste of time. It does list most of the language features, but the examples are silly, repetitive, and pretty useless. One wonders why, for instance, the example given for how to call Win32 functions uses MessageBox. Is that the most usefull of the Win32 functions, or is it just too complicated to give an example of how to use a "by reference" parameter? The disparaging remarks about other languages, particularly C++, are ugly and only serve to emphasize the shortcomings of the author. If comparing this book to - for instance - "Introduction to the C++ language" by Stroustrup, one is struck by the advantages to an author of knowing both how to write in English and to write code, both areas where Eric Gunnerson has room for improvement.
Rating:
Summary: excellent no bs book
Review: This book is straigtforward and concisely written. It is not like other books which write much but say nothing. The author has an excellent didactic method which allows the reader to focus on the topic at hand. The examples code is to the point and focused and not casuistic with irrelevant material meant only to fill space.
Rating: 
Summary: Yet Another Book for experienced C/C++/Java programmers...
Review: This book is very good if you have a C++ or Java background already... just as it is described. It's unfortunate that the first beginning level tutorial book (Sam's) isn't due to be published until August. I think that's a real diservice to all of us who'd like to get in on the ground floor of C# and .NET... as it is, a small group within the company I work for and myself (there are about 9 of us) have taken up the grand task of learning everything .NET Framework by downloading anything and everything available on line. It would be great if there was a really good step through the procedures publication out there like David McClanahan's PowerBuilder 6: A Developer's Guide--probably the best PowerBuilder instructional book out there. Alas, by the time anything of that quality is available, it'll already be obsolete--for our purposes anyway.
Rating:
Summary: Best book currently = by a true expert on the language
Review: This book probably only deserves 4.5 stars - there are things that could be improved. But Amazon likes whole numbers so I rounded it up! Next, people should be aware that this is a book on C# the *language* and it doesn't have a whole lot on actually using the .NET platform for example by showing us how to mix C# with ASP+. Still, this is clearly the best book on the C# language for the forseeable future since Gunnerson is on the C# design team and the book shows that he knows this Java like language better than any of the other authors currently out there.
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