What a tome of a book, but it would have to be to encompass the whole of j2sdk 1.4.

This seems a very good reference book for the SDK with a nice touch being a list of chapters where the new features for 1.4 are discussed.

Each chapter is well laid out with pictures of the output of the sample programs. These sample programs are small and self-contained. They are also complete rather than being snippets of code that don't compile by themselves.

There are a lot of lists of methods and variables from classes and interfaces; this is good from my point of view as I'm trying to use this book to get my SCJP certification. It lists the method and a brief description of it functionality.

The book starts from the basics of Java and then goes into detail about all of the j2sdk features including swing, streams, beans, applets and printing.

It contains a CD with the entire source for the book, j2sdk 1.4.0, JBuilder 6, Optimizeit, Tomcat, Ant, JUnit, JIndent and the BDK.

An excellent book; huge but complete.