Some of the other reviewers carped about the book's glossing over of subjects such as templates, OOP design, exceptions and the like. I didn't find these omissions to be problematic. The authors' contention is that "C++ has crossed the single book complexity barrier", and I tend to agree. Cramming more information into the book would do two things: 1) give readers a false sense of mastery of some very complex subjects, 2) detract from the stated purpose of the book: "to get readers up to speed quickly by covering an essential subset of the langauge". I think "C++: The Core Language" does an excellent job of just what it set out to do--and no more. That's a *strength* of the book, not a weakness. If you already know C (and know it pretty well), you can read this book in a day or two and feel like, "Hey, I see what this C++ thing is about." You can immediately begin to write some programs and play around with the language. Then--as the authors say on the back cover--"it's time to [sic] learn more from other books." Bottom-line: be prepared to buy other books on this complicated language after reading this great introduction for C programmers. [Caveat: If your knowledge of C is weak, you won't get a whole lot from this book. Everything is presented in terms of C++'s relationship to C, so you'd be better served by another book if you only 'sorta' know C....]