Another food-for-thought thing you can read is the chapter in Way of the Scout (also by Brown) on his first solo trip to New York City.

I'm quite proud of this book and I'm proud that Mark Martin and I share the same home town. Batesville, Arkansas.

Get Tom's book The Tracker from amazon.com, to experience him at his best. For better survival skills info get Primitive Wilderness Living by John McPherson, or Outdoor Survival Skills by Larry Dean Olsen.

Unfortunately, this work does not come near the quality of Morgan's second book, "The Devil." Perhaps it is the subject matter, but the material in "Saints" is much less entertaining. That said, I still recommend this book as a great reference (and maybe a good source for baby names :)

Overall, was very enjoyable

This book presents itself to you: the smooth texture of the cover, the small/longish size, the riveting pictures. That's why I'm giving it three stars instead of two. It's an aesthetically pleasing book to read.

The book is filled with tidbit information: little sections on many things. The kind of stuff you read once and then forget. Oh, you'll probably hang onto a couple of things, but will you look at again? Remember it with fondness? Maybe.

If you're a collector of this genre it may be just your thing. But I prefer something more solid and encyclopedic to reference. Aesthetics only go so far.

I chose this book after a cursory examination to be my desktop Java reference. 1,200+ pages of material, after all, must cover every question I could consult it on, couldn't it? At first glance, the last 700 pages which contain package by package, class by class and method by method descriptions would seem to satisfy my requirements. But the true trial would come in time.

The first 500 pages are worthy of mention as they apply to the neophyte to Java, or those seeking an intermediate-level tutorial. The authors give a sound overview of the Java Language in Chapter 3, with several of the following chapters relating Java to C++, Borland Delphi and Microsoft Visual Basic for readers already familiar with those languages. Issues relating to Applets/Application, HTML and HotJava, and the tools that came with JDK 1.0 (javac, javah, javadoc, etc.) are also given their own chapters. The tools are well described with easy-flowing text and usage examples, and they do have tables of command-line options for reference within the chapters.

In the second part, the authors contribute individual chapters covering topics such as the Abstract Windowing Toolkit, Threads and Native Methods. These are enlightening and they have code examples instructive to the beginner. I believe this content could've been better interlaced with the reference composing Part III.

The reference, at first seemingly complete, becomes shallow when put to the test of usage as a "Developer's Reference". My first consultation, to the StringTokenizer class, re-affirmed my confidence in having chosen this book. That class included short example code and good descriptions of every constructor and method. Unfortunately, StringTokenizer is an exception and not the rule. The java.io package descriptions, shrunk to single sentences that expressed little more than the class or method name.

The publisher does offer "continuous Java 1.1" updates via the WWW, although I prefer printed documentation when I need something to refer to while working through a problem. Certainly, Sun Microsystems offers the most up-to-date Java documentation, so the hyper-text already obsolete CD-ROM and publisher's web pages aren't offering anything newer.

This book amounts to a pricey tutorial on Java for those already familiar with other object oriented languages; or a fair if not comprehensive reference to the JDK 1.0. As either, it leaves something to be desired.

No, the class and package documentation are not up to date. But "Hello, ...!", it's a book written on a static output medium called "Paper". If you want the Java 2 documentation, go to Sun's site. If you want an explanation of how to READ the Java documentation and have it make sense, read this book.

The bottom line is, if you're looking for excruciating detail on threads, this book is not for you. If you're looking for enough info to get conceptually well grounded and start putting them to use, then this is it. I just wish I could find books like this on ALL programming languages. It would save me some money and the earth some trees.

NOTE: I bought this book after it was out of print, and I still found it useful. Consider buying it used.