Aimed mainly at students, this self-contained reference book on C++ is of superb educational value. Starting from scratch, Vermeir explains the idea of address, value and type in C++ before quickly moving on to cover the more important aspects of the language such as classes, templates, generic programming and inheritance. He includes recent developments in C++, such as STL and the iostream library. There is also a chapter devoted to program design principles. By using plenty of examples the reader is stimulated and inspired to see how they can use what they have learnt in other more sophisticated applications. All the examples from the text, including some larger example programs are available on the author's website.