I have always kept clear from books that say they can teach you something in 24 hours, but I thought I would have a go. Much to my amazement I am converted to them. This book states clearly that it is not going to teach you the ins and outs but merely a basic grounding in the subject, enough to get you going, at which point you can find material from other sources to take you further.

This book uses C++ in the samples, thankfully full samples of runable code and contains a disc with java applets to demonstrate the different structures and the algorithms used to sort them. These applets can be stepped through to see what the code is doing and help in understanding what the code is doing (a picture paints a thousand words).

So if you want to find out about a subject but you do not want to spend£35+ on a book that goes into the depths of the subject then I suggest that you put aside prejudice and check out books of this kind. They are not for experts, which is, perhaps, why so many get bad reviews from experts.