Amazon.com (ISBN 0130125075, Paperback)

The sheer size (and level of detail) presented here is undoubtedly its most impressive feature. Weighing in at over 1,300 pages, it features an almost endless trove of information with over 500 programming tips, over 1,000 summary points, over 900 programming exercises, and a whopping 5,000-plus entries in its index. This is clearly a textbook and reference for students who want to master the entire Java language. The authors present many challenging exercises and examples too, including numerous interesting graphics problems, a simulation for a simple CPU, a compiler (for the same), and an elevator simulation case study. (In all, there is certainly sufficient material in this book for two semesters of college work.)

Besides a full tour of all the fundamentals of Java, from basic statements to object-oriented design techniques, the authors also delve into more advanced APIs for servlets, JDBC, RMI, and JavaBeans. (Their guide to Swing components is also a standout here.)

While the richness of Java: How-To Program might intimidate some readers, for those who want to experience all the possibilities of Java, this book is a fine choice for a first textbook on introductory programming in Java. Its authoritative and far-ranging presentation can serve as a reliable and effective guide to the truly exciting world of Java development. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Basic Java, applets and applications, control structures, methods, arrays, object-oriented programming techniques, strings, graphics and Java2D, Swing user interfaces, exceptions, multithreading, multimedia, file I/O, JDBC and databases, servlets, RMI, networking, sockets, custom data structures and collections, and JavaBeans.