Have you ever read Andy Koenig's C Traps and Pitfalls or any of the authors' columns in JOOP or C++ Report? If you have you will need no urging from me to go and buy this book.

For the rest of you it is a collection of columns written by them over the last half dozen years. They have been revised so that any relevant changes to C++ since their first publication have been incorporated. The writing has been polished so that it is a pleasure to read (even more so than in the originals). The authors have mastered the art of writing the technical essay and I wish more would do so.

The essays are not about the technology of the language but about how to use this technology with understanding. I think the last chapter (32) would be worth the price of the book to many. It is titled What do you do after you say

Hello World

I am not going to say anything more about this book because I think it should be read by every C++ programmer. You will be a rare person if you neither enjoy reading it nor learn anything from the process.