I have been delighted to receive O'Reilly's brand new edition of "Java Network Programming". This book is packed with nice tips and tricks on how to create network applications with Java 5. Once again, M. Harold has done wonders with his keyboard...

My 9-horseshoes review follows (also available at Javaranch.com):

In a world where people and machines get more and more connected everyday, it is reasonable to consider the network as being an intrinsic part of nature. No matter whether it is wired or wireless, the network is ubiquitous and it wouldn’t be exaggerated to state that 99.9% of all human activities heavily depend on it. Take the network down and get ready to experience chaos! On one hand, such a vision might trigger the scariest nightmares. On the other hand, this massive dependence justifies that we take network concerns very seriously and adopt a mindset that forces us to consider networking as a vital aspect of any information system.

This fully revised edition includes all updates introduced by the latest Java 5 release into one of the most complete and comprehensive reference about Java network programming available today. In order to show you what kind of support Java provides for making sense of all those bytes transiting on the network, the author first discusses some basic network and web concepts and then delves into more specific topics, such as streams, threading, URIs, client and server datagrams and sockets, asynchronous I/O, protocol and content handlers, RMI, the JavaMail API, and many other attractive subjects illustrated by relevant pieces of code.

Whether you consider yourself a novice or advanced Java programmer and you are willing to build network aware applications, don't wait any further and rush to your local store. You won't regret it!