Java in a Nutshell

It's getting old, but the early editions of O'Reilly's "Java in a nutshell" (by David Flanagan) books were targeted specifically at C/C++ programmers learning Java. In my opinion, it's extremely well-written, being correct, clear, concise and engaging. From the 4th edition (which was for Java 1.4), it bulked up from 1 inch thick to 2 inches, and stopped specifically targeting C programmers. It's still good, just not as good. Also, since then, Java has added generics, annotation and several other things. Some of these (esp. generics) have a widespread impact on coding. Also, it doesn't cover the ecosystem. But if you want to start with the basics, it has them. For an introduction to the basics of the language, in terms of C, the earlier editions can't be beat. (your local university library will have several copies - chapters 2 How Java differs from C and 3 Classes and Objects are what you need)