As always Mark Minasi has a way of explaining things that just make it easy to understand. He combines the right amount of humor, analogy, real-world application and academic theory. Much of the information contained in his Mastering Windows 2003 books could be gleaned from other sources, if you wanted to spend hours and hours searching the web. Of course you'd then have to decide for yourself what is accurate and what isn't.
With Mark's books, you can be assured that the information is accurate. They're definitely not light reading, figuratively or literally as the book tops 1,500+ pages. It is however an exhaustive reference to anyone interested in working as a Windows systems engineer or administrator.

His books are consistently on point, and packed full of great information that you can use to do your job. This text is more geared toward actually working in the field as a systems engineer than it is an exam prep; however you'll learn quite a bit either way.