This is a great book to get a quick introduction to Maven. At about 185 pages, it gets right to the point. It`s written using labs and each new one builds on the previous one. I have used Ant and know how it works but was in the dark when it came to Maven. This book gave me the knowledge I needed to understand and modify an existing Maven project within the first two chapters. It`s not a reference manual, and it`s not one of these 500 page tomes that weighs a ton but is light on substance. There`s real content in a very readable format in this book. If you are new to Maven and are scratching your head tryiing to figure out what the heck this thing is doing, read this book and you will be enlightened!