The book claims to be a reference for experienced Java programmers. I find this overstated and would rather classify it as a reasonable global introduction to Java. You need to have some Object Oriented programming knowledge.

The book consists of three parts. Part one, one hundred pages, explains the syntax of Java. Part two, which is three hundred pages, covers basic techniques and general Java classes and interfaces. Examples are given that show how to develop applications using awt classes. Applet programming is briefly discussed. The other covered topics are exceptions, multithreading, I/O, reflection, network programming and RMI, security, JDBC, text and utility classes. This part gives a good introduction to the Java packages for someone new to Java. Lots of small examples are given to get you easily started. It is a pity that there are many typing mistakes and a strange layout in some of the examples.

Part three, over three hundred pages, provides selected API documentation for core packages, classes and interfaces. The packages have short introductions and comments on some points and show the class inheritance diagrams and a full list of methods and data members. For some APIs this may be useful, but definitely not for all APIs. The complicated APIs need more description than just a list of methods.