I have found some of the most exceptional books for learning .NET I have ever seen. The publisher is Murach (http://www.murach.com). I've been working with VB.NET now for about a year and a half and even though the name of the book is Beginning Visual Basic .NET the content is exceptional (read I've actually learned some new things). I discovered these guys on the shelf at a local Barnes & Nobel and then found out that you can get them from Amazon.com for about $20.00 less.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1890774154/sr=8-3/qid=1145722216/ref=pd_bbs_3/104-1933959-0421551?%5Fencoding=UTF8

It received 4.5 stars out of five with 28 review. That's pretty high for a tech book on Amazon.

The layout of the book is fabulous. First, the book is oversized. On the left page is the topic being presented, for example "How data type conversion works" where it talks about widening and narrowing conversions, implicit and explicit conversions, the settings in the project that determine which take place (permissive type semantics/strict type semantics). Then, on the right page are code examples and summarizations that illustrate the points being made using a bulleted structure.

Most wonderful. It is an easy to read, well thought out presentation of important topics.

Has anyone used these books before?

CTBlankenship