I really love this book, it has been useful for me at work.
It helps you covering the gaps on Java basics and gives you good real world advises.
The Multithreading chapter walks you thru from a simple threaded application to a thread pool app. Does go in deep on Threadpooling but gives you enough to get started with it.
The Distributed Objects nicely covers the steps to develop and deploy an RMI app, taking in consideration the small nuts and bolts in configuration and set-up like RMI registry and how to pass parameters and also introduce you to how JNDI works. Which is quite useful to a serious Java programmer.
I found an small problem when starting the server app, but was able to fixed after reviewing the SUN's tutorial on RMI to complement this book info. (thus the 4 stars)
I almost skip the Database Programming chapter, since I have experience with DBs and JDBC but I would have missed the LDAP coverage which was very good, glad I reviewed. I liked the example suggested using open software which makes thing easier to test.
Have not look into Swing and AWT chapters since I am mostly involved with back end development.
Finally I am reviewing the Security chapter which has revealed some intrinsects of how classes are loader and how to customize the process and it has proven been helpful in the deployment process of small apps.