Rating: 
Summary: Worked for me!
Review: I started with the first Stanek edition which had too many errors and weak treatment of some important subjects. I found this book at a Java conference. I found it to be well organized, well written and learned a lot from it. There were a few errors and some an annoying inconsistency in the discussion of threads but nothing of any significant consequence -- I passed the exam easily on the first try. One of the things I like most was that the more challenging self test questions were more difficult than those I had encountered on the exam. Most of the questions in the self tests were very close to what I saw in the exam. The part I like least was the CD. It had most of the same questions as the book. After the first two chapters I gave up the CD and went back plain old pencil and paper. The reason I gave it four stars is that the book isn't perfect and I didn't really benefit from the CD.
Rating: 
Summary: Maybe the next edition will be usable?
Review: This book seems to have been rushed into production; it desperately needs a revised second printing. As it stands, however, there are just too many errors and misstatements for it to be taken seriously. Also, the topics are somewhat out of line with the questions on the exam.Finally, a tough blow for people who are studying hard for the Sun Certified Java Programmer exam: in nearly every one of the practice tests at the ends of the book's chapters, one or more of the book's suggested answers to their own test questions are simply wrong, wrong, wrong. If this book's practice exams give you high marks, you probably will not do very well on the actual exam. If I hadn't switched over to the Sybex book, I probably would have failed the exam, but I passed it the first time. However, it cost me a week or so of finding and unlearning all the misinformation that I had already absorbed. So I recommend avoiding that.
Rating: 
Summary: Some unclear points.
Review: In all fairness, it did a great job guiding me towards passing the exam. But there were many times when I had to actually write a small block of Java code to clarify a given topic that was somewhat unclear. A couple of the test questions/answers at the end of each chapter were wrong. Who proofread this book?
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