As someone else mentioned already this is the only book in its kind and for me this is the only quality it possesses. If it really stood up for what the table of contents promises then it would be the perfect book but the content lets you down pretty quickly. The C language is used in a style that if you don't use other references there is no way to be able to understand C code written in the real world. Except for using the oo structures of the language everything else is in C style. But lets say you want to start with this book since it focuses on applications to pde and then perhaps move on to a more advanced reference for C ; then the book turns out to be too descriptive giving only a feeling of what's involved. There is no need to mention that no book can teach you the math for pde, however you won't learn C as well. The only thing you can expect, again as an other reviewer mentioned, is to run into some slick ideas about how to exploit oo concepts for meshes and adaptive refinement.