It's driven partly by the economics of publishing technical books. Technical books are often more expensive to develop; there may be more authors, technical ed

It's driven partly by the economics of publishing technical books. Technical books are often more expensive to develop; there may be more authors, technical editors, illustrators, etc. working on a technical book. A book may have only one or a few authors listed on the cover, but if you look at the acknowledgements page there may be a dozen or more people involved. Technical books also typically have a smaller potential audience than other books; you can count the number of technical blockbusters on the fingers of one hand. As a result, publishers must price technical books relatively high. In order to convince buyers that their book is worth the higher price, they make it longer. In the case of Java books, they throw in huge appendices that cost them very little in development cost. Most Java books include the interface specifications of the complete set of Java libraries; information which is widely available online. Your best bet is to find a highly rated book, skim the first 50 or more pages to get past the parts where the author explains why his book is the best in the field, then stop reading when you hit the first appendix. I would also recommend buying the e-book version of the book; being able to electronically search through a technical book is hugely valuable.