Originally posted by David McCombs:
... The second edition covers 1.5, which is not the newest version, but still very relevant and useful. More then a book on 1.4 is.
I haven't seen that 1.6 has any changes too significant for beginning Java, so I don't think that beginner books need to be concerned with upgrading from 1.5 to 1.6.
However, the change from 1.4 to 1.5 was
very significant, so I would definitely go for the 2nd edition.