You are unlikely to read this book from cover to cover, but every section we've dipped into is well written and informative. It's highly likely that there is one section that will more than justify the purchase to you and, over time, you'll be extracting more useful information from the other sections.

The one negative comment we have about the book is that we've found a few typos or formatting problems in technical expressions (for example, a misplaced superscript font changed ((2**n) - 1) to (2**(n-1))). This is hardly surprising in a book of such scope - so if something doesn't seem right to you, check it! Carol is setting up a web site to support the book, so it might be worth checking there for errata (go to http://www.baroudi.com).

To conclude, we should say that we're slightly biased because Fujitsu COBOL is the free compiler that was chosen to go with Mastering COBOL but we won't make money from your book purchase! We think that if you're interested in COBOL you really should check out this book, and we congratulate Carol Baroudi on coordinating and pulling together such an all-embracing reference.

Details:
Mastering COBOL by Carol Baroudi
Published by: Sybex
Sybex web site: http://www.sybex.com
Retail price: $49.99 (USA), Amazon.com price: $39.99 (USA) + shipping
ISBN: 0-7821-2321-X