Rating: 

The book does lack solid examples, especially in a few of the middle chapters (Chapters 4,5,6) on classes. In Chapters 1 and 2, you start and build upon a typical "Hello, Java" application - I liked that, but wished it would have started smaller and continued throught the book. That way, once the book was finished the reader would have a nice collection of code that .

Small, practical assignments would have also been a nice plus. Most online or book learning methods for programming include silly applications that no one would ever use. The "Hello, Java" application in this book is pretty good because it shows the use of GUIs which are commonly used. I know O'Reilly publishes a book of Java examples but I have not read that one yet.

A little something on JDBC would have supplemented the content of the book nicely.

All in all, another good book from O'Reilly.