Rating: 

I have bought and read 5 or 6 O'Reilly books and have come to the conclusion that O'Reilly makes the absolute best non-fluff reference books out there. However, this book makes me wonder. The first 7 chapters are adequately done--then the writer ventures into what other messages describe as "his own pet API" JDOM. My question is "who cares"? I didn't buy this book for something I haven't heard of.

However, I was personally insulted by the STREAM of negative comments that the writer makes towards Microsoft and their products throughout the book. Like it or not, Microsoft is a major player in the world of computing and not every tech-head programmer (aka me) does not worship at the altar of UNIX and platform independence. I do not understand the strategy of a writer making comments like "forced to use Microsoft's parser" in the first chapter of the book and expecting any pro-Microsoft to continue reading. Since I spent $40, I did and had a very hard time finishing it.

John.