I will always remember obtaining my advance copy of this manuscript, as it required a walk from my hotel room in lower Manhattan to the W Hotel in Times Square. The trip was well worth it, however! I began leafing through the manuscript on the train back home and didn't even go to sleep until I had read the entire first half. I finished the remaining half in the morning before we arrived in Chicago. When a book is this good, you don't even need the 21 days promised by its title.

The book begins with virtually no assumptions about the reader's previous development experience. This is very ambitious, considering that by the end of the book the reader will have covered all key concepts necessary in order to become a highly skilled ASP.NET developer. This process is helped along enormously by the presence of exercises at the end of each chapter, to allow readers to check their progress toward the goal of ASP.NET mastery.

Part of the reason I so quickly became engrossed in this manuscript is that it gets off to a very quick start. It smartly sidesteps the issues associated with teaching either C# or VB.NET and digs right into a working example to get readers interested in exactly what ASP.NET can do for them in their daily work. Later on, Chapter 3 manages to compress into a single chapter so much C# versus VB.NET material that it would take days of scouring the Microsoft documentation to deduce it for yourself.

The book makes very quick work of teaching the basics of ASP.NET structure and syntax, so the remainder of the manuscript is wisely spent examining the various .NET Frameworks related to advanced ASP.NET development. Just a few of these topics include XML, COM interoperability, and internationalization.

One thing I particularly liked about this book was that every tool described in it is absolutely free for download. Assuming you already have an ASP.NET-capable operating system (Windows 2000 or Windows XP, for example) this book shows you how to install IIS, the .NET Framework, and the free debugger available in the .NET SDK.

The book's attempt to cover Web services in any form is admirable, and a basic understanding of the technology is very well communicated. On the other hand, topics such as SOAP headers, DISCO, and non-ASP.NET clients (a Java application running on Solaris, for example) are mentioned in passing, and then passed over. This is probably a wise decision, considering the scope of the manuscript.

Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Platform: An Advanced Guide
So, there I was in the bookstore, trying to decide what book to buy for a plane trip out to Redmond. I'd been invited to a special .NET technology "boot camp" for authors and wanted to arrive knowing even more about .NET than I knew stepping onto the plane.

My peculiar situation was that I knew a great deal about one specific area of .NET (mobility ­ about which I'd already written a book, Mobile .NET). However, my day job at Expand Beyond (www.xb.com) keeps me up to my armpits in Java most of the time. What I needed was something that would expand the breadth of my .NET knowledge without talking in terms that an experienced Microsoft developer would find insulting.

The first thing you'll notice about Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Platform: An Advanced Guide is its size. At approximately a thousand pages, I knew this wasn't going to be a book I could finish in a round trip between Chicago and Seattle ­ much less on my way out. However, I also immediately felt that a book of this size could present a serious claim to the title of being "the" book on .NET development.

Well, I wasn't disappointed. This may not be "the" book on .NET development, but it's certainly the book to read if you've already done Microsoft development and are now looking to learn about .NET.

I was sold from the moment the author, Andrew Troelsen ­ of Intertech-Inc fame ­ introduced ILDASM on page 33. ILDASM is a tool that lets you examine the contents of any .NET assembly right down to the level of the individual IL instructions. Any book that's already talking about this tool on page 33 has made a conscious decision to dispense with the fluff and get right down to business!

Now, it should be noted that this book is essentially just a VB.NET translation of the author's earlier work, C# and the .NET Platform. So, if you've already read the previous book, you might not find this book nearly as useful as I did. (We'll keep our eyes peeled here at .NET Developer's Journal for the perfect book or books for those of you who have already learned .NET using C# and now want to tackle VB.NET ­ or vice versa!)

Similarly, given my own extensive background in Java, I didn't need any of the in-depth explanations given for object-oriented development or multithreading. However, for the bulk of the readership ­ who will undoubtedly be coming from a Visual Basic 6 (or earlier) background ­ I'm sure this material is indispensable. In any event, it was all wonderfully written and thoroughly explained.

Two things that I'm glad this book doesn't cover are XML Web services and Web applications. I fully understand that Web services are integral to .NET's entire value proposition. I also understand that Web applications represent one of the most stunning applications of .NET's incredible flexible architecture. However, the author gives a more than adequate introduction to the concept here, so there's no need to devote any more coverage to it. Microsoft's own documentation and numerous other works do an excellent job where this is concerned.

For over a thousand pages, this book tells you everything you need to know about .NET ­ without a bit of fluff ­ and that's quite an accomplishment. I must deduct half a star, however, because I couldn't locate the author's e-mail address anywhere in the text or on the cover.