ASP.NET 2.0 Black Book
Authors: Dreamtech Software Team
ISBN: 1-933097-17-5
The title "ASP.NET 2.0 Black Book" is misleading. Most people interpret black books as the revealing of unknown and interesting facts. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Even though you do get quite a bit of pulp, a lot of it is a duplicate of what you would expect in MSDN documentation. Or rather, it is a glorified version of the MSDN documentation as it comes with screenshots and downloadable examples.
While it has a fairly large section on Caching in ASP.NET 2.0, it does not focus on things such as ASP.NET cache objects in a web farm scenario: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheASPNETCacheObjectInAWebGardeningScenarioWithIIS5OrIIS6.aspx. Granted, it may not be applicable to the general audience as not everybody works in huge shops. I am using caching as an example but this deficiency exists in all topics covered. I appreciate the fact that there was an attempt to provide more value in the book with "Immediate Solutions" sections in each chapter (which was also inadequate). However, I just can't let go of the fact that it is inappropriately titled "Black Book" =). I guess I was expecting something more along the lines of: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/pages/ASP.NET-2.0-Tips_2C00_-Tricks_2C00_-Recipes-and-Gotchas.aspx. The book instead uses up quite a bit of the pulp going over properties available for controls in ASP.NET.
If you have been working with ASP.NET for a while, then this is not the book for you. In fact, I would recommend the following book instead, Professional ASP.NET 2.0 Special Edition. I looked through it last year as an eBook and found it to be a decent read. They did a nice section, Chapter 9, on Cache Hacks. Another notable one is Chapter 17 on Handlers and Modules. To come to think of it, there were several good sections. If that isn't enough, Scott Guthrie gave it thumbs up for it as well.
But if you are new to ASP.NET and would like to ramp up, perhaps this is a reasonable reference. It would have been more appropriate as a "Learning ASP.NET 2.0" book. On second thought, you may still want to get a hard copy of Professional ASP.NET 2.0 instead, reference Help (online and/or offline) in VS2005 and ASP.NET.
Rating: P00r