Top 10 Must-Read Java Programming Books

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A list of the most important Java programming books ever published. These books are must-reads for every professional Java programmer, no matter their specialty or experience level.

1) Thinking in Java

Author: Bruce Eckel. Eckel packs this book with humor, practical examples, and programming insights. This book is a comprehensive introduction to the Java language and its core APIs. Although the book is geared toward beginning programmers it covers many topics that experienced programmers would benefit from, especially the coverage on object-oriented programming.

2) Java in a Nutshell

Author: David Flanagan. This book is the classic primer on Java for experienced programmers. It begins with a terse, quick, reference to the the Java programming language. It then covers the most important Java API classes in-depth. The book contains a plethora of useful code snippets illustrating Strings, Collections, I/O, etc.

3) Effective Java Programming Language Guide

Author: Joshua Bloch. After you have written a few Java programs, you will be ready for this book. It covers intermediate and advanced Java programming concepts such as the best ways to create and destroy objects, effectively overriding equals() and hashcode(), checked versus unchecked exceptions, etc. This may be the best Java book ever written.

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4) Java Examples in a Nutshell

Author: David Flanagan. The second book on the list by Flanagan, this one picks up where Java in a Nutshell leaves off. It provides short, concise examples of using Java's API classes. If you want to learn how to create a Swing GUI application, execute a JDBC query, encrypt a credit card number, parse an XML document, etc. the answer is in this book. Browsing the many included examples is a great way to explore the Java API.

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5) Swing, Second Edition

Authors: Pavel Vorobiev, Matthew Robinson. Swing is the primary GUI widget toolkit for Java applications. This book is the bible on Swing, being both a tutorial and a reference for advanced Swing developers. This is not an introductory book on Swing. Even if you mainly write server-side code, the MVC, user interface design, and event handling coverage in this book make it a must-read.

6) Java Servlet Programming, 2nd Edition

Author: Jason Hunter. This is the classic tome on writing Java Web applications using Servlets, JSP, and JDBC. The author has included working code examples for just about all the common Web application tasks such as processing form inputs, receiving uploaded files, communicating with a database, etc.

7) Enterprise JavaBeans

Author: Richard Monson-Haefel. Although J2EE encompasses much more than just Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), EJB is the main force behind the J2EE specification. This book will concisely reveal everything you need to know about all the different flavors of EJB. Whether or not you plan to use EJB, you need to understand this important technology.

8) Expert One-on-One J2EE Development without EJB

Authors: Rod Johnson, Juergen Hoeller. This is the definitive book on J2EE development without EJB. Using popular, lightweight, frameworks and object-relational mapping tools, the authors illustrate how enterprise applications are often better off without the complexities of EJB.

9) Concurrency: State Models & Java Programs

Authors: Jeff Magee, Jeff Kramer. Multithreaded programming is an advanced topic, but Java allows any programmer to spawn threads. This book provides a solid grounding in the theory and practice of modeling and implementing concurrent programs.

10) Concurrent Programming in Java

Author: Doug Lea. After you understand the syntax of implementing threads, read this advanced text to learn how to do it correctly and efficiently in Java. The book takes an in-depth look at concurrency and parallel programming. The working programmer can walk away from reading this book with a higher-level concurrency library in his tool belt (the java.concurrency package that Lea wrote and that was included in JDK 5.0).