Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Vermilion Sands is a fully automated desert-resort designed to fulfil the most exotic whims of the idle rich, but now languishes in uneasy decay, populated only by forgotten movie queens, solitary impresarios and the remittance men of the artistic and literary world.

It is a lair for beachcombers, hangers-on and malignant obsessions - a place where sensitive pigments paint portraits of their mistresses in a grotesque parody of art; where prima donna plants are programmed to sing operatic arias; where dial-a-poem computers have replaced poets; where psychosensitive houses are driven to murder by their owners' neuroses; and where love and lust, in the hands of jewel-eyed Jezebels, pall before the stronger pull of evil.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction
• Who Should Read This Book
• Conventions Used in This Book
• Sample Code for This Book
• Week 1 At a Glance
• A Note to C Programmers
• Where You Are Going
• 1 Getting Started
• A Brief History of C++
• The Need for Solving Problems
• Procedural, Structured, and Object-Oriented Programming
• Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)
• C++ and Object-Oriented Programming
• How C++ Evolved
• Should I Learn C First?
• C++, Java, and C#
• Microsoft's Managed Extensions to C++
• The ANSI Standard
• Preparing to Program
• Your Development Environment
• The Process of Creating the Program
• Creating an Object File with the Compiler
• Creating an Executable File with the Linker
• The Development Cycle
• HELLO.cpp-Your First C++ Program
• Getting Started with Your Compiler
• Building the Hello World Project
• Compile Errors
• Summary
• Q &A
• Workshop
• Quiz
• Exercises
• 2 The Anatomy of a C++ Program
• A Simple Program
• A Brief Look at cout
• Using the Standard Namespace
• Commenting Your Programs
• Types of Comments
• Using Comments
• A Final Word of Caution About Comments
• Functions
• Using Functions
• Methods Versus Functions
• Summary
• Q &A
• Workshop
• Quiz
• Exercises
• 3 Working with Variables and Constants
• What Is a Variable?
• Storing Data in Memory
• Setting Aside Memory
• Size of Integers
• signed and unsigned
• Fundamental Variable Types
• Defining a Variable
• Case Sensitivity
• Naming Conventions
• Keywords
• Creating More Than One Variable at a Time
• Assigning Values to Your Variables
• Creating Aliases with typedef
• When to Use short and When to Use long
• Wrapping Around an unsigned Integer
• Wrapping Around a signed Integer
• Working with Characters
• Characters and Numbers
• Special Printing Characters
• Constants
• Literal Constants
• Symbolic Constants
• Enumerated Constants
• Summary
• Q &A
• Workshop
• Quiz
• Exercises
• 4 Creating Expressions and Statements
• Starting with Statements
• Using Whitespace
• Blocks and Compound Statements
• Expressions
• Working with Operators
• Assignment Operators
• Mathematical Operators
• Combining the Assignment and Mathematical Operators
• Incrementing and Decrementing
• Prefixing Versus Postfixing
• Understanding Operator Precedence
• Nesting Parentheses
• The Nature of Truth
• Evaluating with the Relational Operators
• The if Statement
• Indentation Styles
• The else Statement
• Advanced if Statements
• Using Braces in Nested if Statements
• Using the Logical Operators
• The Logical AND Operator
• The Logical OR Operator
• The Logical NOT Operator
• Short Circuit Evaluation
• Relational Precedence
• More About Truth and Falsehood
• The Conditional (Ternary) Operator
• Summary
• Q &A
• Workshop
• Quiz
• Exercises
• 5 Organizing into Functions
• What Is a Function?
• Return Values, Parameters, and Arguments
• Declaring and Defining Functions
• Function Prototypes
• Defining the Function
• Execution of Functions
• Determining Variable Scope
• Local Variables
• Local Variables Within Blocks
• Parameters Are Local Variables
• Global Variables
• Global Variabl

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Jesse Liberty, President of Liberty Associates, Inc. is the author of Sams Teach Yourself C++ Programming in 21 Days,(1st and 2nd editions) and Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 24 Hours. Jesse authors a monthly column in C++ Report, one of the most widely read C++ programmer reference periodicals. Liberty Associates provides on-site training and mentoring, consulting and contract programming. Jesse was a software architect for Xerox, a distinguished software engineer for AT&T and Vice President of Citibank s Development Division. Jesse Liberty is an established author of books on the topic of C++ and object-oriented design and analysis.