The book has been written to give an excellent grounding to those who whish to learn application development using JDK 2.X. Like all his earlier books this book also has several illustrative examples, which have a logical link between them.Each set of examples helping build skills that will take the reader to the next set of examples, which in turn lead upwards until a strong programming foundation using JDK 2.X has been established.The topics covered -Introduction to Java,Java Class,Java Programs,Java Applets,Event-Driven Programming,JavaException Handling,Java File Handling,Java Multi-Threading,Java Database Connectivity,Networking Basis,Java Swing,Serialization,Java-Remote Method Invocation (R.M.I),Java Servlets,Java Beans,Each topic is very liberally sprinkled with examples that are mapped to applications, which fir in the real world.All the example code is on the enclosed CD-ROM, which also contains several other goodies, which would be useful if you are looking at working on the Internet as a way of life. Most of the stuff on the CD-ROM can definitely be used to enhance your web skills.The author believes that this book is focused on addressing the skill building of an individual from entry level to intermediate and in some areas such as JDBC and RMI beyond the intermediate level.