Rating: 

A lot of people bag on this book and that is unfortunate.

This book is not a reference. The pitt book is a reference.

This book is an introduction to distributed computing with RMI as the vehicle. This book has helped many people like myself who were simply not ready for distributed computing when they read it. The coverage of IO and threads is necessary.

I can honestly say that after reading this book, I was both prepared for distributed computing and proficient as an RMI developer. But, this is not a commercial for me. This is a positive review for a very good (and unfairly maligned) book