Not a day, but 24 one-hour Java lessons aimed at non-programmers and those with little programming experience. Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 24 Hours certainly starts at the beginning with an overview of programming as an activity, downloading SDK from Sun and installing it under Windows, Linux and Solaris. The author makes few assumptions about his readers computing expertise and every chapter ends in a Q and A session followed by a quiz.The book is divided into six sections and a collection of useful appendices. Section II introduces programming basics including variables and constants, strings, conditional tests, loops and then objects and inheritance. By the halfway point you are building a simple visual interface using Swing and the Abstract Windowing Interface--though you will have to wait a couple of hours before you learn how to make it do something.Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 24 Hours probably won"t unless you"re already a fairly good programmer in another language. But if you worked through it assiduously you would have a basic understanding of the Java language. What you won"t have is the experience which makes it useful.However, the example programs Cadenhead works you through are easily adapted and extended, which provides a starting point for practice. Overall, this is the best introduction to Java for complete beginners this reviewer has seen. --Steve Patient