Unfortunately I thought I was getting a deal at $0.99. All you get is a few pages of intro, nothing else. The description makes no indication that is all you get.
Very, Very Good
In an age where many technical books are full of typos if not outright misinformation, Hibernate in Action stands out as very well written. It seems that spell-checking has replaced editing for many technical books. This book is not only informational, but easy to comprehend.
The only down side to this book is that it is now somewhat dated in that it does not cover the current release of Hibernate. Nothing on annotations, etc. However, this book is not merely "The Professional Learn Framework X Bible in 23 Days" API memorization aide. Hibernate in Action provides you with the theory of why to use an Object Relational Mapping (ORM) framework and how to best leverage this knowledge. This information is not Hibernate specific and does not lose value with the inevitable new release.
Concise and well written.
A great book for getting going with Hibernate quickly.
Some parts are heavy going because it is packed with info. This pays off because there is little or no padding/rubbish.
Try their newer book instead
This book is for Hibernate 2. Hibernate 3 is covered by the same authors in Java Persistence with Hibernate
Useful narrative
I found this book useful and readable, and it helped me develop my first (and second) Hibernate applications. It begins with a brief overview of the kinds of problems which ORM solutions need to address. It then introduces Hibernate along with a couple of examples, upon which subsequent chapters build. (Some reviewers have criticized the examples, but I thought they were useful, and I didn't have trouble following them) One thing you should be aware of: while this book is a good narrative, it's not as useful as a reference. I find myself paging back and forth among several chapters which cover topics in different levels of detail. That shouldn't be a show-stopper since reference material exists on the web. You might be concerned is the book covers Hibernate 2.1, while Hibernate 3.x and Ejb 3 are out; the book is still relevant and valid, and I've used it along side Hibernate 3 with no problem.
