Rating:  - Waiting for the Third Edition
Many years ago when I decided to take the C# plunge, it seems I bought just about every C# book printed to quickly get my arms around this new language. Of all the books and through all the recent versions of C#, this Archer book remains a constant go-to for precise information. I don't think you can find a better book to get a full grasp of class design, development and deployment considerations.
I'd really like to see a third edition but until then I'll keep this valuable resources at my side.
Rating:  - A good reference
When I need to explain an document OO concepts in a C# perspective, this book is a great help in most situations. If you need in deepth knowledge of the code DOM etc. you are stock.
Still it is the only generel C# book that has survived as a part of my .NET book collection.
Rating: - Should be renamed
This is actually an introduction to C#, good for beginners, but not for people who already have a lot of experience on other languages like C++. Title is misleading.
Rating: - A great book for intermediate/advanced developers
As others have mentioned, this book is not aimed at new developers. However, if you are an intermediate or advanced developers, this is a great book for learning C# in depth. One thing I found very useful is that it often refers to C++ or Java to point out differences. This is very important in areas where C# works differently, like calling virtual functions from constructors.
The book shows lots of MSIL for the examples. Although there's a table of the MSIL commands in the back, there's not enough information in this book for these to be comletely understandable. You'll need to learn more about the CLR and MSIL elsewhere for these to really be helpful.
A wide range of topics are covered, including some advanced topics like COM interop. There is also a chapter on security, although I felt it lumped too many topics together there without going into enough depth on them.
The biggest problem I had with the book was the huge number of typos and misprints. I noticed another reviewer said that many of the examples didn't compile. This could have been one of the reasons. I was amazed at how many errors I saw in the code, most of which looked like simple typos.
Rating: - Everything I could ask for
For C# developers this book should be required reading. It will teach you to think in C#, to see the answers to problems without writing a line of code.
Archer writes in a very straightforward and easy style. I found the book hard to put down. The explanations are clear and concise.
The examples are extremely well-done. I learned as much from them as from the book itself. You'll want to work through every one of these - you'll learn tons from them.
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