The 1st edition of this book was equally useful as an undergraduate textbook and as the lucid, no-nonsense guide required by IT professionals, featuring many code examples, screenshots and exercises. The new 2nd edition adds revised language reflecting significant changes in J2SE 5.0; update of support software; non-blocking servers; DataSource interface and Data Access Objects for connecting to remote databases.
From the reviews of the second edition:
"This book provides an overview of Java ... . Each chapter is supplemented with practical programming exercises. ... This is essentially a good book. ... the combination of code templates with good supporting discussions allows a competent Java programmer to rapidly expand his or her skill base to include network programming." (M. S. Joy, ACM Computing Reviews, Vol. 49 (3), March, 2008)