Traditional DS&A books are written in academic style and filled with obtuse mathematics and difficult proofs. But Robert Lafore's straightforward, friendly style presents the topic in an easy-to-read, easy-to-understand style, allowing programmers to grasp the concepts quickly and apply their knowledge to their programs. This book uses the very popular C++ programming language for examples and code samples.
Pretty good book. The applets help, as you can step through them to see what is happening. For instance, you can watch a bubble sort program in action. Examples were kind of lame/boring: Numbers on jerseys of a child's baseball team and stuff like that. I don't know, I guess that example's okay--you have to use something, sort some kind of data.