As a collector of the entire series, no one awaited this book more than I. I feel let down. Of the 13 stories, (and it's only 318 pages, not 352), seven are fiction. These were not well chosen: selections from Treasure Island and Moby Dick are not even set at sea, but are the land-based openings of the books. The non-fiction does not live up to the billing of the editorial reviews that preceded it on this page. There is not much shipwreck or survivial: several are more like philosophical essays as opposed to stories with an edge. The story on diving the Andrea Doria is perhaps the best in the book, but many of us will have seen it elsewhere, as it is recent. Why a fictional account of the Titanic and not a true one? For a book on treasure, why nothing of Mel Fisher and the Atocha? If you want sea adventure, the earlier book in the series, Rough Water, delivers a bigger punch. This volume, regratably, is one that you can put down between stories.

As a passive individual, I live through the words and experiences of first hand authors for my adventure. This narrative simply scratches the surface of those before it. "Ship of Gold", "The Fatal North" and "Abandon Ship!" come to mind immediately as adrenaline rush examples. Any of the several publications on "The Endurance" far exceed the expectations of "Deep Blue". The human spirit has greater tales to tell.

Caveat Emptor. I bought this book without really looking at it first... what a mistake! Of the 370 total pages, the first 114 pages are about installing the Slackware CD included in the back cover (installing and configuring Linux was covered in the first of this series of books). Those 114 pages might have been better used to cover "programming" in Linux. The 2nd chapter [C Programming Tools and Linux] goes from page 115 to page 134 (less than 18 pages of content). The 3rd chapter [X Windows Programming] goes from page 135 to page 179 (less than 44 pages of content). Chapter 4 [Using Tcl] goes from page 181 to page 201 (less than 19 pages). And so on... The book tries to cover too much. Most of the information is not even useful for doing anything, not even introductory in nature. I'm sorry I bought the book, and I hope this review will keep others from wasting their money on it. All in all, this is one of the worst computer books I've ever purchased, and I'm very sorry I got it.

I agree with the previous poster's comments on the viability of this book for learning programming. The title is all wrong; it's not specifically about programming! HOWEVER, it is a very good book for those new to Linux in that it answers alot of the questions that new users have. It highlights the many of the strengths of LINUX from a UNIX point of view. i.e. pipes, redirections, job-control, Xconfiguration, programming basics. Patrick Volkerding does a very good job of demonstrating Linux and detailing it's true power. This book should be renamed "Getting started in LINUX". If it was...I'd give it five starz!