Very poor reviews???? I will address that in a moment...

It is not a re-hash of the on-line help. Yes, there is information that is contained in the on-line help (I'll get to that in a moment too). Having said that, the book does a good job at segmenting the various aspects of using the .NET framework (UI, data, debugging, OO, etc.). That is the value added aspect of the book.

To be fair, the book got ONE bad review. It got ONE excellent review. It got THREE good reviews (3 stars). The average review is 3 out of 5 stars. Overall, This would be a good review (not very good and not excellent, and better than fair or poor!) It is in the middle... There are some things that could be improved, but it is far from the worst thing I have seen.

Further...

With respect to (as you say, a re-hash of the online help), that comment referred to the code samples and DEFINITIONS, not the entire work itself.

Last word...

I bought the book and worked through it. Perhaps you should do the same thing before parroting somebody else's comments. At the very least, if you are going to do that, get it right. Don't misrepresent it...

The guy asked:

"Is there a simple tutorial-level sample, book or article anyone would particularly recommend for someone like me?"

The book has a nice set of excecises that takes you through the core aspects of windows-app development.

Now, what point were you trying to make????