Maybe I am stubborn, or maybe just rational, but I see no reason to force EJBs on myself when there are many simpler and more robust ways of doing things. The entire book, except for one chapter on Java SE, assumes that you are wiring everything, including transactions with EJBs. I would suggest the Persistence with Hibernate book (which refers to hibernate implementation of JPA as well as Hibernate specific APIs) Much more information, laid out cleanly and does not assume EJBs for every example. And I know the book is for JPA 2, but on some pages they jst have notes that say "XX was not introduced until JPA2, and for JPA1 you must do it differently." YEAH? HOW?!