The end of BookWait settled an old score. Even though they are largely sponsored by the dark forces of Seattle, the DevelopMentor XML reference is just what I wanted. Paperback sized, comprehensive, up to date (not the usual book collection DTD's they need to retire from all the books on XML) and it even covers Java (by court order, perhaps?). It manages to make it from tags to soap (sadly no WSDL) in 350 pages. No mean feat when there's even plenty of examples and room to cover SAX and DOM as well.