Head First Java, 2nd Edition

Core Java(TM) 2, Volume I--Fundamentals (7th Edition) (Core Java 2)

Java In A Nutshell, 5th Edition

Beginners Guide

Ivor Horton's Beginning Java 2, JDK 5 Edition

Format: Paperback
Author: Ivor Horton
ReleaseDate: 31 December, 2004
Publisher: Wrox
Rating:

Excellent beginner's Java tutorial
. As the title says: "Beginning.. ", so the experts that wrote a review shouldnt be angry. The author explains every term he uses [excellent teaching practice!], does not assume that you should "of course" "know" this. . . Naturally, if you are an experieneced progammer this book may be too long, but alas: read faster in this case.

Four stars because of (some) mistakes. Otherwise 5*.

HORRIBLE Editing - Great Book!, Highly Recommended
Ivor's teaching approach, although frustrating and daunting, effectively teaches the language concepts you need to begin programming. This is a great book, and the longest that I have ever read. You will find yourself adding code to an example and redoing it later and redoing it later. . . each time learning a tiny bit about design and some about the Java language. The big example (a drawing program called Sketcher) is developed over several chapters and is used to demonstrate all sorts of language features including a good intro into Swing. Even though I feel that this is a fairly solid book that I would recommend, I am only giving it 1 star to bias my vote and communicate a message to Wrox: Hire at least one book editor that has some quality standards. The book is fraught with mistakes (most don't appear in the Errata as of 2/16/06).

... a very poor programming book
On the cover, 'Ivan' tells you how good his style is and how he'll teach you a marketable skill - what he teaches you is how to write second rate scratch. The book is rife of unsound programming practices.
My main gripe is the example code. . . I personally don't think it's much to expect for all the code in a programming book to be compilable nevermind correct.

This is really a disgrace.

Do yourself a favor and buy an Oreilly book or just do the turorial on java. sun. com.