Rating:  - It doesn't get any better than Jesse Liberty
As a new programmer, and even newer to .NET and ASP.NET this book is a must have for anyone serious about learning ASP.NET. The book covers every aspect of using ASP.NET, and the examples can be used in real world situtations. You can also find Jesse Liberty featured on http://www.appdev.com courses. What are you waiting for, go get this book!!
Rating: - Best ASP.NET book available
As with the first edition of this book, the second edition continues to be the best ASP.NET book available today. This edition has been updated to include information on the 1.1 version of the .NET framework as well as Visual Studio 2003.
Unlike many other ASP.NET books I have seen, you can actually pick this one up and begin writing ASP.NET applications quickly. The book begins with an introduction to the Visual Studio development environment, which is necessary knowledge to be able to effectively write and compile code. This introduction does a very good job quickly describing the most important features of the IDE. For a more thorough introduction to the Visual Studio .NET IDE, pick up a copy of O'Reilly's Mastering Visual Studio .NET.
This book then proceeds to discuss each of the ASP.NET server controls in detail. Examples are provided in both C# and VB.NET, with clear preference given to C#. Some of the more difficult concepts are clearly explained, with enough information provide to satisfy more advanced readers.
Personally, I found many of the highlights of this book to be toward the end, where an excellent section on data access can be found. This has often been a point of contention with me: most applications today have some amount of data access involved. Unfortunately, most .NET books have only a small (and largely inadequate) data access chapter. The data access section in this book is one of the best I have seen. Even if you know a lot about ASP.NET, you'll probably learn a thing or two from the data access section.
The authors also have written an excellent chapter on creating custom controls for applications. There is a very good discussion on creating user controls and custom controls (both of which can be used as re-usable components in web applications).
Like the previous edition, this book doesn't disappoint. This is a must have for ASP.NET developers and an excellent tutorial for individuals trying to get their hands around ASP.NET.
Rating: - Gold Mine!
This book is a gold-mine - explaining well the .NET concepts. As an experienced ASP developer, it gave me good background to understand the differences between ASP and ASP.NET. The examples are structured to build on each other and are well thought-out. I had a question about one of the examples and posted it to Jesse Liberty's web site (url included in the book). He answered it right away! Great book!
Rating: - Highly Recommend It
This is an excellent book. In fact, it's the best ASP.NET book I've seen yet. I did find myself skipping around in it a lot more than reading it cover to cover, but, all in all, it's a great book. I often refer back to it as a reference. Also, the code examples are in both VB.NET and C#.
Rating:  - Beginners Only
I am a big fan of O'Reilly titles, however this book is not one of the better ones. The code examples are lengthy and always (unnecessarily) provided in both C# and VB.NET. Some of the more interesting topics like security are glossed over. This is a thick book and I would expect it to include some discussion of Web architecture with .NET, performance issues, and when to use client side processing. The second edition has a fair number of misprints and typos. On the plus side, it gives thorough explanations of web controls and basic processing, and is a good introduction to ASP.NET.
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