Rating: 
Summary: A Baby is just an Abortion Waiting to Happen
Review: Just like this book is a complete waste of time to those who can't read a C++ book. My high school computer science class seemed able to comprehend this book and half of them (myself included) got a 5 on the AB Advanced Placement Computer Science Exam. Those who can't do a binary to hex conversion shouldn't be allowed to program a computer and should stick to their orange iMacs and pretty screen savers. Go learn some ZBASIC and get a coat hanger. SUCKERS!
Rating:
Summary: A Baby is just an Abortion Waiting to Happen
Review: Just like this book is a complete waste of time to those who can't read a C++ book. My high school computer science class seemed able to comprehend this book and half of them (myself included) got a 5 on the AB Advanced Placement Computer Science Exam. Those who can't do a binary to hex conversion shouldn't be allowed to program a computer and should stick to their orange iMacs and pretty screen savers. Go learn some ZBASIC and get a coat hanger. SUCKERS!
Rating:
Summary: Perfect
Review: Simply perfect. Easy to read, simple to understand, and with helpful problems. The instruction is topnotch- the best book I've encountered.
Rating: 
Summary: Poor writing, poor explanations, poor value
Review: The author includes many topics without explaining them long before they are needed. Her mentality seems to be "I'll give you every term in C++ then several chapters later I'll get around to telling you what each of these means and does." That type of writing will confuse anyone who does not already have a solid foundation of C++. This book has about the same amount of organization as the stories my 98 year old senile great grandfather tells about the martians fighting in World War I. I read Oleg Yaroshenko's The Beginner's Guide to C++ before using this book for a class (luckily, otherwise I don't know how I would have passed it). I liked it very much. It explains everything in simple terms, unlike this one. (It also costs about half as much.) The labs in each chapter are terrible as well. Most are completly useless. I can't think of a single one that was an interesting problem that taught you something.
Rating:
Summary: One-sided, tough to learn from.
Review: The problem with the book is not with how much material it covers, but with how well it covers the material. Most good computer books that I have read have covered a topic and then gone to explain something step by step using examples and multiple scenarios, but I feel this book just gives a "it works because it does" attitude.
Rating: 
Summary: An O.K. book, but choose another if possible.
Review: This book could be alittle more detailed, i.e. using more examples. It throws random stuff at the reader for no reason which can be quite confusing. Try to convince your teacher to switch books in the beginning of the year; that's my suggestion.
Rating: 
Summary: Essential only for the AP Computer Science student.
Review: This book is written with the AP Computer Science Examinations in mind and therefore covers most of the basic topics that are tested on the AP examinations. However, it is poorly written and contains several inconsistencies. The fragmented explanations of working with text files are wholly inadequate. The section concerning the use of pointers and references is highly superficial and provides little in terms of true understanding of these concepts. The chapter on inheritance is unecessary because this is not part of the APCS subset and therefore is not tested on the AP exams. There are much better choices.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed
Review: This book poorly explains the concepts needed to understand C++. It is advertised as an introductory book, however, this book will only be useful with one or more semesters of exerpience with C or C++. The books only saving grace is that if you are studying for the AP, this book uses the STL dirived AP classes that you will need to be familar with. If you arn't taking the comp sci AP there is no reason to even consider using this book.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed
Review: This book poorly explains the concepts needed to understand C++. It is advertised as an introductory book, however, this book will only be useful with one or more semesters of exerpience with C or C++. The books only saving grace is that if you are studying for the AP, this book uses the STL dirived AP classes that you will need to be familar with. If you arn't taking the comp sci AP there is no reason to even consider using this book.
Rating:
Summary: Full of jargon, lacking organization
Review: This book suffers from the fatal flaw of not being written in English. In addition, the poorly organized chapters lapse into unneeded technobabble, confusing the beginner with a technical discussion of the IEEE representation of a 4 byte number and such. There is no clear progression of ideas in this book. The first examples of programming include code far far too advanced for a beginner. This intimidates a beginner and leads to confusion and frustration. The very first example of c++ code in this book is a 400 line beast that uses classes, strings, booleans, and call by reference. As if that wasn't bad enough, the written descriptions frequently collapse into messes of hopelessy convoluted grammer and vague pronouns. If you hold it to your ear, you can almost hear the anguished screams of real writers everywhere.
In addition, the end chapter tests frequently contain questions that are misleading, vague, obscure, and just plain dumb. The workbook (sold separately) is slightly better but still lacking.
My advice is to buy Savitch's problem solving with c++. It's a great book and helped me to master c++ quite quickly and to move onto Java with confidence.
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