Rating: 

I am very comfortable programming in C/C++ and a number of other programming languages. I decided to take a university level Java course and the book that they sent me was "Thinking in Java" by Bruce Eckel, which is very highly rated by many many Amazon reviewers. I quite enjoyed that book, but about 400 pages in, it just got too heavy with detail and there were no useful examples to demonstrate the concepts (most of the examples' methods are empty braces).

I picked up a copy of Head First Java because I trusted the publisher, O'Reilly. They didn't let me down. This book has many useful features that make learning easy and fun. I think that I finally truly understand OOP concepts like enacpsulation and polymorphism - and I had already read the "Tao of Objects" previously!

Now that I understand the language, I am ready to resume my university studies with Bruce Eckel's book.

Kathy Sierra & Bert Bates have done a terrific job. If you want to learn Java, then read this book first!