This book covers all the main language features that are Java specific, providing an extensive and detailed discussion of these components. Therefore, its main audience consists of developers with an already good knowledge of the basics of Java (like imperative and object-oriented features) who want to learn more about advanced features. Beginning Java developers should start by reading the first book in the series [1] before diving into this one.

The book is structured into 13 chapters covering annotations, inner classes, reflection, generics, lambda expressions, threads, input/output (I/O) (4 chapters), garbage collection, collections, and streams. All together, it provides an almost encyclopedic coverage of the various topics. Therefore, I would recommend it to (a) professional developers who want to keep pace with the new Java features, (b) students who have recently graduated and want to acquire more knowledge of the language, and (c) people interested in getting a Java-specific certification.

However, most readers will only be interested in some chapters of the book rather than the full content. In fact, the single chapters, with the exception of the part about I/O, can be read and understood in isolation, and they provide a deep overview of the topic they introduce. For instance, if one is facing serious slowdown in a program because of the Java memory management, the chapter on garbage collection can provide a deep understanding of how this works, and how the developer can modify the program to speed up the execution. On the other hand, if one needs a quick solution to a simple advanced problem (for example, creating and modifying a Java archive (JAR) file), nowadays websites like stackoverflow.com already provide an effective, immediate answer in most cases, and there is no need to read a full chapter to know how to implement it.

On the weak side, the book does not provide a systematic and uniform treatment of these features. Therefore, the book is not a suitable textbook for academic courses, even if some chapters, like the one about threads, might provide an exhaustive understanding and interesting code snippets for teaching purposes.

These remarks aside, I would recommend this book to all professionals looking for a comprehensive presentation of the main Java features that have been introduced in the language during the last ten years. Even if most readers will not be interested in the whole book, it might be an essential resource to be used as soon as one needs to deepen his personal knowledge on one specific topic.