In general, Jesse does a great job at hitting the high points for the various topics covered. Writing a technology book that tries to cover a wide variety of topics can easily become a book not specific enough for anyone, but this book really cuts to the meat of what you need to know to hit the ground running on the new Framework. For instance, the chapter on Windows Forms discusses new features that will really help make developers more productive, like Toolstrips, Click-Once Deployment, the BackgroundWorker object and new layout options. The Web Applications chapter hits Master Pages, personalization, the new login controls and themes. In both these areas, there are enough new things going on that there will likely be whole books devoted to particular features.
But this book will give you a good idea of what to look into, what to learn more about and where to get started. I found many of the "What About" sections especially useful. They tend to target the kinds of questions many developers are likely to ask about a feature or they drill down into a subset of the feature of particular interest.
If you are looking for a quick way to figure out all the new stuff coming in the C# language, this book is jam packed with useful tips and the type of real information that will help you become productive on the new framework.
Edited: PC
Article comments
1 - DrPat
Nice review, Curtis -- I know what you mean about the format and focus; these are designed to be lab notebooks, with solid guidance to lead you to a better coding practice.