Rating: 
Summary: Poor Contents
Review: Regrettably this is one of my books in UML (just because it is from Oreilly). A piece of advice to the author: take some time to strengthen your UML background -- playing around with words is the not the way to write a book.
Rating:
Summary: I can't believe Oreilly published this one...
Review: Are you looking for a book on UML, go somewhere else...Using bullets are good for making points clear, but not as default font for a book. And content should be refined if this book is to deserve the nutshell title from Oreilly. This is probably the worst book on computing that I have ever read, and hopefully it will be for some time. It was very disappointing compared to the usual Oreilly standard.
Rating:
Summary: Intensly dislike the writing style.
Review: Found it unreadable, gave up. Two problems: 1. Excessive use of bulleted points, where prose should be used. Everything is lists, which can't build up an idea like a paragraph does. They seem to repeat points, and you can't retain this info. 2. Extremely vacous business buzzwords used throughout.
Rating:
Summary: Just poorly written
Review: I thought this book would be up to the usual O'Reilly standards. I was wrong. Don't bother. UML In a Nutshell should be about half its current size. It's full of verbiage that doesn't really add anything. The book should "cut to the chase" and get stuff accomplished up-front, rather than wax philosophical in bureaucratese for the first three chapters. Bits like "The problem occurs within a business context (domain or space). The solution must be realized to fit within the organization's information technology infrastructure (domain or space)." [p16] should be taken out and shot with the bullets from the neighboring pages. I mean really, who cares (domain or space)? You can open this book at random and find pretty much the same kind of writing. Sorry. At least it wasn't that expensive (domain or space).
Rating:
Summary: NEXT!
Review: 'UML in a nutshell' is a book I do not like. The terminology used deviates from what is commonly used in all other books on the subject. I disagree with the sequence in which the author presents the material and find his introduction to OO one of the worst ones I have ever come across. Trying to capture all of the UML in such a small book resulted in the book containing information that is only mentioned and not explored, leaving the reader confused rather than enthused. Finally, what does not help at all is the heavy use of bullet points throughout the book, which is a characteristic of the bad style this book is written in. I apologise to the author, maybe he is brilliant at what he does for a living (one never knows), but a technical writer he is not. END
Rating: 
Summary: Apologies, but not abject ones :-)
Review:
I am disappointed that so many people have disliked this book so intensely. I was not the development editor for the book, but I was the one who signed the book for publication. I did so because I'd been trying to read UML Distilled, and when Sinan's proposal came in, with his bullet-list format, I found it a much quicker way to absorb the buzzword barrage that is the price of entry to UML. Obviously, other people didn't feel the same way (although I'll note that along with a bunch of terrible reviews, there are a number of very complimentary reviews from people who have had some UML experience, so we didn't completely miss the mark.) However, if the book doesn't work for many of the people who buy it, it doesn't work! In this case at least, the customer is always right. However, I do want to dispute the idea that the book was just slapped together. It was under development for the better part of a year, and a good chunk of it was written before we even signed a contract for the book. So if the book was a mistake, at least it wasn't a hasty one! :-) I also want to say that Andy Oram, the developmental editor, had some serious hesitations about the bullet-list format, but I urged him to go ahead with it. I thought it was an interesting experiment in how to come up with an "In a Nutshell" compact reference for such an abstract topic. As those of you who are In a Nutshell fans know, we've extended the series from books on command-line interfaces (UNIX in a Nutshell, Linux in a Nutshell) and programming languages (Java in a Nutshell, Perl in a Nutshell) to all kinds of other topics. It hasn't always been easy to map the concept (concentrated reference) onto material that isn't necessarily reference oriented. As you'll see, I tried one of the more difficult topics myself with Windows 95 in a Nutshell and the soon-to-be released Windows 98 in a Nutshell. These books adapt the format to a GUI-based system. I think they are really good books, but people from the Windows world, who find the under-the-hood mindset foreign, may find them a little difficult. In a similar way, I wonder if some of the issues with this book aren't issues with UML. It's definitely a different way of thinking about software development. That being said, we clearly haven't established a reference point or a style that makes sense for many readers. We'll have to go back to the drawing board. Thanks for giving the book a try, and thanks for letting us know that it didn't work for you and why.
Rating:
Summary: First O'Reilly book (out of 5) I've ever returned - Useless
Review: Densely written to the point of being unreadable. I've been working with UML for a while and was looking for a more complete reference, but this isn't it. It doesn't even adequately or reasonably explain what I already knew, and is sometimes downright contradictory in its use of terminology. O'Reilly must have really been asleep to put their name on this worthless exercise. My other O'Reilly books are the best and most useful references I've ever had, but this does not deserve to be in the same company.
Rating:
Summary: One star is too flattering for this book - YAWNnnn
Review: What can I add to the remarks made by all the other one-star reviewers? Not a lot. I could bullet-point all their comments. This would give prospective purchasers a glimpse of what they are letting themselves in for. Like some of the other reviewers, I have come to regard O'Reilly's Nutshell series as a quality source of information. This book provides a sharp lesson in taking things for granted. NEVER AGAIN. I can only console myself with the thought that the bookwas not too expensive a mistake.
Rating: 
Summary: Advanced UML; for a limited audience
Review: This book was extremely significant to me, and reading it was a very positive experience. However, I cannot take issue with a lot of the comments posted thus far for this book. I have read Grady Booch's UML User's Guide, the UML Specifications, James Rumbaugh's OMT Book (from 91), and Desmond D'Souza's Catalysis work. Though I have plunged through each work at least twice, there were still some significant missing links, and this book was a great help in filling many of these in (how Use Cases relate to Sequence & Coll. Diagrams; how Use Cases can use signals (Statechart events); and the real difference in Statechart and Activity diagrams). For those who wanted a quick course in UML, with some well thought-out examples... I can understand their disappointment. It is unfortunate that the online purchasers could not read the author's preface, which states that the reader should have UML experience before diving in. It is a quick reference, not a tutorial, and that difference is huge. I own the Java in a Nutshell book, and I _could not_ learn Java from it... it was useful only after I discovered the basics somewhere else. So I believe O'Reilly stuck to their original Nutshell philosophy, and should not be attacked for not handholding every beginner. I quite enjoyed the first few chapters, which were a metamodel of terms that underly the entire structure of problem solving... an interesting philisophical discussion worthy of three or four reads (and worthy of its own book)! The UML introduction chapters were far too short to be of use (as anyone who has tried to read or write a comprehensive example in UML will notice). However, the reference chapters on the individual UML elements are written well... the bulleted lists and removal of examples make for a quick, uncomplicated, unclouded read. You can always hope for more (any UML book under 500 pages that claims to be comprehensive is suspect... UML is sooo powerful, its applications are illimitable), but for a light 250 page, $20 book, I was quite satisfied. Find a bookstore, flip through chapter 2 and the reference chapters, and see for yourself. When in the field using UML, I have my notes from Booch's User Guide, and a copy of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Not an O'Reilly type of book!
Review: I was gonna buy this book until I got hold of my co-employee's copy. This book is so BORING that I gave up reading it after 2 chapters! I would usually have a quick glance at all the pages of a book to get rough idea on what the book is all about. But this time, I came up with nothing. The presentation style is so AWFUL it doesn't matter anymore what's inside the book!
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