Can A Book Be A Great Teacher?

Does the echo of a great teacher's voice live somewhere in the back of your head? I've been fortunate to have a few teachers whom I considered great. They're the ones who taught in a special way. The ones that I learned as much or more from after their class was all finished than during the semester. They left more than information in my head. They left an imprint. Their echo pops up at the oddest moments, helping me to make a connection between some new fact that I've just observed and something they taught me. I'd name some names, but few of you would recognize any of them, plus I think they all know who they are -- or knew, as the case may be.

I recently, thanks to arrangements made by Tom Duff, received a review copy of the O'Reilly book Head First Java. I have many O'Reilly books in my collection. Seven of the nine technical books on my "easy reach shelf" are O'Reilly books. That's the shelf that is less than two feet away from my monitor. Only four out of 121 books on my "climb on a chair and stand on tip-toes shelf" are O'Reilly books (Managing UUCP And Usenet, TCP/IP Network Administration, UNIX In A Nutshell and POSIX Programmer's Guide). None of the dozen or so odd books scattered around the house in the "read a few pages, put it down, didn't finish it and didn't bother to shelve it collection" are O'Reilly books.

ehttp://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=203&uid=swg211163Head First Java is very different from all the other O'Reilly books I have on my shelves. In fact, it's very different from every other technology book I own or have ever seen. Head First Java wants to be a great teacher. It wants to leave an echo in my head. That's the best way I can describe it.

Has it succeeded? I can't really say yet, because not enough time has passed for that echo to start popping up. I can say that Head First Java is the closest thing I've ever come across on a printed page to the type of experience one gets sitting in the classroom of a teacher with a passion for the subject. It teaches by story, by analogy, by demonstration, and by infusing humor into repetition of important points. It creates images that are memorable, like this one: "objects don't bark!". I'm not going to explain it, because what the book is teaching at that point is really beside the point, which is that the book gives you something really memorable in addition to the thing that you actually need to remember.

The primary intended audience for this book doesn't really include me, because I'd say I knew a little too much Java to begin with; but I did learn from this book, and I re-learned some things with greater clarity than I had had before. There's also a Head First EJB book, which I do intend to read. I am definitely in the primary intended audience for that one.