Best Book for a Newbie in Java

I have been wanting to learn Java but like most developers, I do not know where to start. What is my strategy to learn Java? Should I just take any book and try learning from it? What are JAR files, or how about Ant? Any newbie in Java would get intimidated by all those floating terms in the Java space.

Luckily for me, I talked to people, searched around the Internet and found that the best way to learn Java is by reading the book 'Java in a Nutshell, 5th edition'. The book is amazingly concise and it gives you enough details to be able to understand the different Java terminologies. Also, it gives you a concise introduction so that you can eventually start writing your own Java code.

My motive for learning Java was really not learn to program with it but rather more on understanding Java's ecosystem. How is Java Bean related to JVM? Or if I see an error message, how do I interpret it? Can I read the syntax in a confident manner? Fortunately, these were answered by the book. Therefore, I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn Java from scratch.