As an example, consider its treatment of queues. I can't believe that anyone who has ever written ten lines of code needs to be told what a queue is, so for most readers this is a waste of time. But those who are unfamiliar with the concept will find the book's coverage cursory and confusing.

On the other hand, the author several times makes his point by printing dumps of MSIL virtual machine code. How many readers, whatever their level of programming experience, can read this stuff?

The book introduces concepts in a few paragraphs, then demonstrates them with a page or two of sample code, most of it (since these are complete programs) useful only for killing trees. The reader is left to pick through the dross: "Oh! I can pass a string to the exception constructor!" and "Oh! I can pass a string and an exception to the constructor!" The author does not provide a prototype of the constructor -- he does not prototype anything. The book is very long on sample code, and very short on necessary detail.

Any programmer will need a language reference, and this book does not even provide a summary. The closest it comes is an appendix of language keywords. Consider the entry for "using". "Specifies that types in a particular namespace can be referred to without requiring their fully qualified name types. The using statement defines a scope. At the end of the scope, the object is disposed." Deep thinkers may argue that at an abstract level the two uses of the keyword "using" are fundamentally the same; but to the rest of us code butchers there are two distinct meanings. This explanation conflates them, and confuses us.

An experienced C++ or Java programmer can use this book to get a rough idea of the C# language, but he will still need a language reference. A new programmer will be able to type in the sample code and run it, but he too will need something meatier. There must be a better book out there, and I advise you to look for it.