What Java book to get for a beginner?

I recently completed my freshman year in college where I took an introductory programming course which used Java. For what it was, the course was great. But now that I am really starting to explore Java, I realized that the book we used really did not teach much.<BR><BR>I have had other programming experience - although not extensive - and am looking for a really good book that will teach me everything I need to know about Java. Assuming that you were going to give a book on Java to a beginner who had never touched Java before and expected them to come away with an excellent understanding of the language, what would you give them? Any good recomendations?

The JavaRanch Bunkhouse has a list of good books. Sounds like you're looking for the beginning section.
Personally I liked the 'Just Java' series by Peter van der Linden. A bit too much GUI coverage for me, but the rest is fantastic. (well, the GUI stuff is fantastic too, if you like that kind of thing)

I like Bruce Eckel's book "Thinking in Java", the electronic version is free.
http://www.mindview.net/Books

I like "Java How to Program" Deitel & Deitel.

Originally posted by Shane Roylance:
I like "Java How to Program" Deitel & Deitel.

Ugh ... I can't stand this book. It is good if you really need specific problems solved... but I would not use this to learn from.
I would suggest Ivor Horton's beginning Java 2 (SDK1.4). It's really helped me out of several jams and been useful to learn from.

Hi Kevin
"Object-Oriented Programming with Java: An Introduction" ISBN: 0-13-086900-7 is a great book to learn from, although very textbook like.
Combine it with Java Cookbook Solutions and Examples for Java Developers, ISBN: 0-596-00170-3,
and you have a winning combination - IMHO.
Regards,
Martin

The "Deitel and Deitel" books are great for a whiz bang tour of Java, Ive yet to work on the Advanced Java book, which is packed with topics.
IMO if you want to learn Java you could do worse than trying one of the Oreilly books.
Cheers.
Mark

I've bought & loved both of the Deitel & Deitel Java books. They have a wonderful style of showing you the code and then explaining row by row what the code does & how. They also have a good online site that supports their books.

Hi and congratulations on joining the Java commune.
Well, since u have already started off with Java, I would recommend the best book I kno of, "Core Java" from Sun. It has two volumes and almost extensively covers all aspects.
If u find it too heavy, you could go for on of the following:
1) Beginning Java : Wrox Publication
2) Java How to Program : Deitel and Deitel
3) Inside Java : Karanjit S. Siyan
4) Thinking In Java : Bruce Eickel
5) Java The Complete Reference : Herbert Schildt.

All the best and great reading!
Neel

A good, comforting religioius text would also help...
I have a copy of the Java Black Book by Steven Holzner (Coiolis). It is based on JDK 1.2, but, as a reference (especially for those of us who aren't object oriented yet) it is real good in that there is a little fluff and lots of examples and breakdowns of how to use the classes and what the (basic) methods do and such. (I'm an old tech geek in a new world, so I need it as simple as possible.)