The course team have identified a number of books which you might want to use to supplement your reading or might prove useful if you ever seriously program using Java in the future.

The books are

• Java in a Nutshell. D. Flanagan. Pub. O'Reilly Books. ISBN 1-56592-183-6.1996.
  More of a reference book than a teaching book, although it contains a useful tutorial on Java for the C++ programmer. The main strength of the book lies in the last four-fifths, which is an easy-to-consult reference to the Java packages. O'Reilly, who are an excellent technical publisher, have a Web site which describes their latest books. They also publish Web Review, a free magazine devoted to Web topics.
• Core Java. G. Cornell and C. Horstmann. Pub. Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-13-565755-5. 1996.
  A book which takes you from the fundamentals to advanced topics such as networking. In the 1996 edition can be found a CD which contains a lot of software plus a 'lite' edition of the Symantec Café development environment. Prentice-Hall have an excellent series of professional books on Java.
• Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days. L. LeMay and C. Perkins. Pub. Sams Net. ISBN 1-57521-030-4. 1996.
  A book which claims it can teach you Java in 21 days. This is a bit optimistic but, nevertheless, this is an excellent graded set of chapters on the main Java topics. The writing becomes rather poor after day 17 of the course, but up to this it is superb. A good alternative to Core Java.
• Tricks of the Java Programming Gurus. G. Vanderburg. Pub. Sams Net. ISBN 1-57521-102-5. 1996.
  The title of this book is somewhat misleading. It doesn't really contain any tricks. However, it does contain many chapters on advanced Java topics such as the AWT and security. Once you feel confident with Java then this is the book that you should read. Somewhat expensive (£46.95 in 1996) though.
• Java Network Programming. M. Hughes, C. Hughes, M. Shoffner and M. Winslow. Pub. Manning. ISBN 1-884777-34-1. 1996.
  Strangely, while there are a large number of books which describe how to program in Java there are very few which describe its main use: for network applications. This excellent book does cover it.