Rating: 
Summary: Well-written book on threads
Review: (I read the 2nd. edition)
What I especially like about this book is that it doesn't only repeat what you could already learn by going through specifications and API-docs, but actually discusses the merits of the Java solutions with respect to concurrency. So you don't only learn about synchronization and thread scheduling, but also about the limitations due to the architecture of Java. What is even better: the authors propose succinct solutions for overcoming those limitations. This is all done by means of a limited number of examples that are developed in a way that pinpoints the problems and clearly illustrates the steps to their solutions. By reviewing these examples you can easily recall the flow of the argument.
Rating:
Summary: Vastly improved in the 3rd edition...
Review: (This review is for the 3rd edition of the book)
Thread programming in Java can be a great feature or the bane of your existence. If you need a good book for understanding the subject in depth, get a copy of Java Threads (3rd edition) by Scott Oaks and Henry Wong (O'Reilly). It's quite good...
Chapter list: Introduction to Threads; Thread Creation and Management; Data Synchronization; Thread Notification; Minimal Synchronization Techniques; Advanced Synchronization Topics; Threads and Swing; Threads and Collection Classes; Thread Scheduling; Thread Pools; Task Scheduling; Threads and I/O; Miscellaneous Thread Topics; Thread Performance; Parallelizing Loops for Multiprocessor Machines; Superseded Threading Utilities; Index
The first thing to note about this book is it's now in its 3rd edition, and apparently has been vastly improved. I never read the 2nd edition, but the reviews on Amazon are less than steller. The authors have updated the book using J2SE 5.0, which has improved the threading abilities of Java. As a result, there are fewer custom classes in the book that the authors deemed necessary to do more complex tasks. The focus has returned to core Java threading functionality available in the latest version of Java, so you'll be getting the most up to date information here. The subject matter starts off with the basics of threading, and then builds upon that information so that you can start to code and build complex threading applications. They also do a good job of noting the differences in 5.0 so that you can see where improvements have occurred. All really good stuff...
I enjoyed going through this book, and I'm sure I'll be referring back to it on a constant basis when my coding starts to get into any threading issues.
Rating:
Summary: 3rd Edition is a whole new book
Review: I also have an old copy of the 2nd Edition, which I would have given 3 stars. However, the 3rd Edition might as well have been published as a new book. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the organization, chapter layout and code examples are essentially all new - not just tweaked from the previous edition. If you're looking for a good book on threads, this is it.
The example code is well done, and the concepts are illustrated satisfactorily. If you download the examples from the web site, each chapter has a list of the code samples and the ant tasks to run to use them, which was a nice touch. While the concepts behind Java Threads apply to most versions of Java, I'd say this book is really geared toward the J2SE 5.0 environment.
It's too bad Amazon can't reset the rating for each edition, as the 3rd Edition is quite an improvement. Be sure to check out reviews starting in September 2004, when this book was published.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Disappointed
Review: I have much respect for O'Reilly books but this is the second book from O'Reilly that I have thrown to trash can. The topic is very poorly covered - for example, the covers very briefly in chapter 2 about the difference between extending 'Thread' class vs. implementing 'Runnable' They states that this topic is 'beyond the scope of this book'. This is basic 101 on Java Thread - Runnable vs. Thread and Runnable is very prefered way. Why? Well, if you extends 'Thread', you cannot extends other classes. Also, you don't have to worry about changes into Thread class in the future.After reading first two chapters, I threw away the copy. You are better off with other books.
Rating:
Summary: This book blows!
Review: I started reading it for the second time, and it stinks! I'm just gonna put it down and spend some more money. It was a twisted learning experience, not worth a cent.
Rating:
Summary: Valuable experience based information on threading
Review: I've always been amazed at how quickly engineers jump at the option to use threads. Threads create a whole new level of complexity and nasty bugs called 'heisenbugs' that disappear once the debugger gets switched on. That's why having a book that gives experienced based information about how to manage the complexity is so important. It's not just about APIs.
The topics covered include performance issues, architectural information about where and how to use threading, and how to manage communications between threads.
I recommend this book for any Java engineers creating threaded architectures, or writing code on top of a multi-threaded architecture.
Rating:
Summary: Best Book on Java Threads
Review: It not only covers the threads API, it also covers how they work and advanced tricks to using them. The problem which most of the threading material related to Java I've read in other books has contained errors. "Java Threads" as well as Doug Lea's "Concurrent Programming in Java" are the only accurate books that I know of although their focus is very different. Another good thing about this book is that it has much otherwise hard to find information about how threads actually work in Java. I highly recommend this book to anytone working with Java threads. I'm sure you will find information in here that you previously didn't know.
Rating:
Summary: A good reference book on Java Threads.
Review: Review Date: Dec 2004.
Please Rate the overall value of the book from 1-5 where
5=Well done! This book will be a valuable teaching and reference tool.
Please rate the instructional value of the book from 1-5 where
5=Excellent! An essential book on this topic.
Please rate the reference value of this book from 1-5 where
4=This book has earned a valued place on my reference shelf.
This is a book for Java programmers of all proficiency levels; the book also provides information for
advanced users of Java. the book uses J2se 5.0 version of the compiler - and explains the
improvements in the threads implementation in this version of java.
the book is a well written book with a gradual introduction to the various aspects of thread
implementation and a detail study of the subject. the authors delves into various of aspects of
thread implementation such as creation, management, data synchronization, notification, scheduling,
pooling, performance, parallelizing loops, and other IO functions.
there are sample codes through out the book and the codes make no assumption about the skill level of
the reader. this is a good thing. there are enough diagrams to explain the threading concepts.
overall, this is an excellent book for readers interested in concurrent programming. i will use it as
a reference when i need and i have no hesistation in recommending this book to other java programmers.
Rating:
Summary: The 3rd Edition, book or software, finally gets it right.
Review: The sub-title of this book is Understanding and Mastering Concurrent Programming and I think that this pretty well sums up what it's all about. In perhaps its simplest and most obvious task consider a word processing system. Periodically you want to save what you've typed. So you hit Control-S or whatever, and then you wait until the save is completed before you can continue typing. If the save routine and the data input routine were written using threads, both could run at once and you wouldn't have to wait to continue typing. That's a pretty trivial example compared to something like a web server where you get a request, prepare a page to be displayed and then send it out to the browser that made the request. If this had to be done sequentially, the resulting server would be slow; very, very slow. And since most communications channels are so much slower than the processor, you'd best have several threads running just to handle the transmission of the page.
These are simple to understand threads. And the first one, saving and typing are fairly simple to program. To get suitable performance out of a web server, you want some pretty good programmers. No one is going to claim that programming in threads is the easiest kind of program to write. But it can be argued that programming threads in Java is easier than just about any programming language. This is especially true with the additions made in Java 2 Standard Edition Version 5.0 (J2SE 5.0).
This book is not intended to be your first Java book. You need to know the Java syntax, philosophies, and have some experience in programming. But having said that, most of the Java programming books skip over threads or treat them very superfically. This book picks up where those books leave off. It's intended for the intermediate level programmer up to advanced. And it's an O'Reilly book, they don't do bad stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Could be much better
Review: This is a prettry decent book on threads, but I frankly found it to be a little flat. The writing doesn't exactly pop and it is a pretty small book. I think they could easily write a book about twice the size and cover the topic entirely.
However, if you are new to multithreading, or at least new to Java threads, this is a great intorduction to the subject. And it is very difficult to find a lot of information on Java threads anyway, which is why I bought this book in the first place. There are some very practical code examples too, including a round robin scheduler.
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