Rating: 
Summary: A Great Reference for Novice & Experienced Programmers Alike
Review: When I needed to learn the Java programming language very quickly for work, I read many reviews and narrowed down my search to handful of few books. I looked at copies of my final possible choices in a local bookstore and finally purchased Herbert Schildt's "Java 2: A Beginner's Guide, Second Edition" and have absolutely no regrets. Along with this book, I realized that I would also need a more comprehensive reference book detailing the multitude of Java classes designed for many purposes. To this end, I chose Herbert Schildt's "Java 2: The Complete Reference, Fifth Edition" not only for its extensive library, but also because of Herbert Schildt's wonderful writing that is easy to read and understand quickly.Herbert Schildt subdivided "Java 2: The Complete Reference, Fifth Edition" into four parts: tutorial, library, software development and applications. Part I (the first 346 pages) is a Java tutorial, organized similarly to Herbert Schildt's other book that I purchased, "Java 2: A Beginner's Guide, Second Edition". However, the tutorial in this book is more condensed than in the guide, which has over 500 pages. Some readers may find the condensed approach in this book sufficient to learn the language, but if you want more comprehensive tutorial explanations, the guide is good companion. Part II (the next 539 pages) is an extensive library detailing most of Java's built-in classes dealing with everything from string handling, collections, utility classes, console I/O, file I/O, networking, applets, event handling (mouse movements, button use, and other interactive GUI objects), the AWT (Abstract Window Toolkit), images and other I/O types including Regular Expressions. Part III (the next 128 pages) provides some information about Java Beans, Swing, Servlets and a helpful guide for migrating from C++ to Java. Part IV (the next 123 pages) shows Java in action with four example applications. Overall, I rate Herbert Schildt's "Java 2: The Complete Reference, Fifth Edition" with 5 out of 5 stars. It has become a constant companion as I learn and work with Java.
Rating: 
Summary: Both a learning aid and a reference book
Review: I have always enjoyed Osborne's "Complete Reference" series, and this book is no exception. Designed as both a learning aid and a reference book, I found that material was both easy to lookup and the text was engaging enough to read through. The book starts out with an overview of Java, including a discussion of OOP. If you're an experienced OO Programmer, you'll probably be a bit bored. Really the first 6 chapters cover all the basics of creating a Java program (including data types, operators, classes, and control statements). After this initial discussion, the book gets a bit more complicated by diving into inheritance, threads, and I/O. What I really enjoyed about this book is the rest of it: after this discussion on Java language principles, the rest of the book is a how-to on the various Java libraries. For example, in the chapter on the java.util library, there is a section on the HashSet class. There is a description of the class (including various overloaded constructors) and a good example of how to use it. Think O'Reilly's Java In A Nutshell but with a lot more instruction and examples. Another thing I really enjoyed about the reference section of this book, is that "gotchas" are clearly outlined. Where there are tricky little things you wouldn't think about, or differences in how Java behaves depending on what your might expect, this book explains these issues. In any case, the reference section covers the java.lang, java.util, java.io libraries in addition to providing detailed discussion of using networking and AWT libraries.
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Summary: My Favorite Java Book
Review: I was very pleased with this book...it has some solid examples, I used it in my Advanced Java course.
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Summary: Three in one!!
Review: This book is perfect for beginners, the first part is great,i really couldn't understand well the threads and IO part, but it was great in applets. A very organized book, wonderful way of explanation.
This book is 3 in one, it explains, it gives you codes and examples, and at the same time it works as a perfect reference book!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent tutorial & reference
Review: For a beginner, Java 2 - The Complete Reference will be a perfect tutorial. I especially liked the first part of this book, which has been written in quite an exceptional manner. Unlike a few other books, this book does not make nagging references to C/C++ and so, even somebody without prior knowledge of C/C++ will find it easy to read. The sections on AWT and applets are also presented in a superb way.
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Summary: wanna learn about sun's baby JAVA?
Review: This is a very organized book. I recommend this book for beginner. If some one has background of c++ will find this book more easy to read. You can try this book if you don't know Java.
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Summary: Better Name - Java Manual Pages
Review: Ok, so I knew C++ before I started to read this book. Maybe thats why I found it pretty easy to understand. But from the persepective of the beginner, I think this book might rush him into things a bit. Though the initial few pages are a bit helpful in understanding the basics, later chapters read more like manual pages. They are only helpful because they are a bit more explanative than Java Documentation, and they feature example code. I would recommend this books to people who have grasped the basics of Object Oriented Programming (OOP). It is also good for experts for a quick review of many helpful Java classes. Novies of programming should stay away from it for a while, until they have some experience in OOP.
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Summary: A "must have" Java reference
Review: This is the best Java reference that I have found. The combination of Naughton's expertise and Schildt's writing experience yields a book that is accurate, as "complete" as can be expected, and well organized. "Core Java" sits on my desk and gathers dust while this book gets used! This book covers language features in enough detail that it would be appropriate for a junior developer learning Java, and is especially useful as a reference for senior developers. I found this book especially useful when I was jumping between Java, C++ and Visual Basic programming. The first Java book that I owned was Naughton's "The Java Handbook". It was an excellent book (one of the few at the time that did not focus on creating cute applets). The language changes for 1.1 and the numerous additions for 2.0 left the 'Handbook out of date. This is an excellent follow up.
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Summary: some disappointments but still useful
Review: having read the author's books written for the C/C++ world some ten years ago, I was expecting the same pleasing coverage of wide ranging topics. I was disappointed in the absence of Swing expect for just a cursory coverage of 10 some pages. For my problem specifically involved the BoxLayout layout manager, and since it is a Swing layout, it was not included at all. And even the AWT layout managers were detailed in a example that didn't demonstrate the nifty things one can do. Hopefully it will be covered in a later edition.
Rating: 
Summary: Begins well, but falls apart
Review: The early chapters of this book are a decent introduction to Java for beginners. Later chapters are not up to the standard of the earlier ones, and one chapter in particular (on the Java 2 collections classes) is shockingly bad, full of incorrect information that would be hazardous to your career. If you're a beginner, it would be fine to start here with the first third of the book; then toss it in the recycle bin and move on to the Core Java series.
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