Rating: 
Summary: Packed with useful information
Review: This is an excellent book to learn about Windows from a developer's perspective. It has the most lucid explanations I've read on the Windows operating system, covering topics such as processes, threads, synchronization, memory architecture, Windows messages, DLL injection and device contexts. There is a whole chapter dedicated to strings where the author cleary explains ALL types of strings used in Windows (there are very few books that include this important topic). For those who complain about not enough coverage of the Win32 API, *READ THE PREFACE!*. The author states very clearly that the book is "...not intended to be an encyclopedia for the Win32 API...", the goal is to present "...enough information to get an overall feel for the Windows OS and the Win32 API...". I think he went beyond the stated goal. As for the reviewers complaining about the book heavy slant towards C, it escapes me how anyone would want to read about the Win32 API without expecting to find C all over the place. This is not a book to learn VB syntax or VB tricks, it's about how to interact with the Win32 API from VB, so it's important to learn the details about the API, not about VB. Last but not least, do not expect this to be a hardcore guide to Win32 programming, that's something you just can't do with VB.Added Dec 12, 2001: After studying the new .NET platform I realize that this book is sadly outdated. You can still use the Win32 API in VB.NET, but there's no good reason to do that anymore because the .NET framework provides equivalents for just about every API call you can think of, and more.
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