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Rating: 
Summary: Just fair!
Review: As a first year CIS major and with no programming experience (unless you count BASIC, 10+ years ago in H.S.), this book has been an invaluable source. With the instructor admitting that our current textbook is sometimes confusing and that it jumps in and out of topics without warning, this book sums up many things in a clear, concise manner. It's very confusing and frustrating to reference the textbook for an answer, only to end up more confused then when you started. I can not say what value this will have for an experienced programmer, although I would think that that a reference book for any level programmer would be useful. After all, no one can remember everything about all aspects of a language. However, the level of reference that this book provides may not be enough for veteran programmers. I simply do not know. Anyway, I believe it to be a great addition to any beginner's Java library.
Rating:
Summary: Just fair!
Review: I bought this book because my current java reference book was getting old. I chose this specific book because I have a C/C++ reference book by Herb Schildt which is excellent. In fact, I would highly recommend this book. However, I found this java reference to be too vague with not enough programming samples. I think I was expecting more from the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Not the best choice
Review: I was surprised not to like this book, because the author's reference on C++ is one of my favorite C++ books. However, this book just does not cut the mustard. The class overviews that make up the bulk of the book never seem to have quite enough information or quite the right information, and the overview material in the early chapters isn't that great, either. Again, it's an issue of just not presenting useful information. Case in point: the discussion of "static" gets a total of three short paragraphs which bring up almost none of the important points about this keyword. Yet, almost two pages are devoted to recursion, which is certainly an important topic in computer science but isn't exactly the sort of thing that you're likely to be looking for when you go to a reference book on Java. If you're looking for a good general reference on Java, try David Flanagan's "Java In A Nutshell," instead.
Rating:
Summary: Not the best choice
Review: I was surprised not to like this book, because the author's reference on C++ is one of my favorite C++ books. However, this book just does not cut the mustard. The class overviews that make up the bulk of the book never seem to have quite enough information or quite the right information, and the overview material in the early chapters isn't that great, either. Again, it's an issue of just not presenting useful information. Case in point: the discussion of "static" gets a total of three short paragraphs which bring up almost none of the important points about this keyword. Yet, almost two pages are devoted to recursion, which is certainly an important topic in computer science but isn't exactly the sort of thing that you're likely to be looking for when you go to a reference book on Java. If you're looking for a good general reference on Java, try David Flanagan's "Java In A Nutshell," instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Quick and succinct reference book
Review: This book provides quick and fast reference to almost all the java api and implemented classes. In addition, it provides brief but clear explanation to important concepts such as inheritance, interface and exceptions that's meant to be more of a refresher. I feel that this book is good for those who have fairly good concept of programming in other languages and just need the nitty stuff in the java language. Although most of the stuff you can probably read off the free Java SDK reference, I find it more handy to just search for what I need in the index of this book. Besides, I find the section on programming tips really useful and they save one the chore of having to go through all the details in thicker java programming reference books. For beginners, Java 2: The Complete Reference, by the same author, might be a better choice, since it goes into details with all the important concepts and provides more examples.
Rating:
Summary: Quick and succinct reference book
Review: This book provides quick and fast reference to almost all the java api and implemented classes. In addition, it provides brief but clear explanation to important concepts such as inheritance, interface and exceptions that's meant to be more of a refresher. I feel that this book is good for those who have fairly good concept of programming in other languages and just need the nitty stuff in the java language. Although most of the stuff you can probably read off the free Java SDK reference, I find it more handy to just search for what I need in the index of this book. Besides, I find the section on programming tips really useful and they save one the chore of having to go through all the details in thicker java programming reference books. For beginners, Java 2: The Complete Reference, by the same author, might be a better choice, since it goes into details with all the important concepts and provides more examples.
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