Review by Billy Barron

"Java Fundamental Classes Reference" by Grand and Knudsen (O'Reilly; ISBN 1-56592-241-7) is in what I consider a tough market segment. It is up against "The Java Class Libraries" from Addison-Wesley, which I consider to be a perfect book. What makes the Addison-Wesley book so good is excellent formatting combined with great descriptions and code examples. Also, they alphabetized back on class name and ignored the class heirarchy which makes things easy to find.

Let's get back to the book we are currently reviewing. This book starts off with a few short chapters of descriptive material and then spends the bulk of its time being a pure API reference. Unfortunately, it is missing the formatting, code examples, and organization scheme that made the Addison-Wesley book so great. This book has two significant advantages though. It covers Java 1.1 which will not happen with the other book for several months. The other advantage is that it costs a lot less compared to the price quoted for the Java 1.1 version of the other books (it is becoming a 2 volume set). A minor plus is that it lists all the Inherited Methods for each class.

In conclusion, this is a worthy book, but unfortunately, it is just plain outclassed by one of its competitors. However, this book has an important edge at the moment since it is available for Java 1.1 whereas the other is not.