C by Dissection 3rd Edition is a textbook for teaching C to new programmers. One unique feature of this book is how it "dissects" an example program to explain how each part works. The book also includes end-of-chapter exercises to give students a chance to practice what they've learned, but solutions are not provided.

This book starts with the very basics such as variable declaration, operators, and code comments. The book also covers C control structures including if else, for loops, while loops, do while loops, and the switch statement. The book also covers typical first-year computer science topics such as constants, user-defined functions, enumerated types, structured programming style, arrays, pointers, recursion, C structures, and file I/O.

At the end of every chapter, there is a "Moving to C++" that briefly covers how the material in that chapter compares to how it is handled in the C++ programming language. However these sections are too brief to serve as a full tutorial on C++. Students that want to learn C++ should probably look for a dedicated C++.

As this book is primarily written to teach C, experienced C programmers looking for a reference would probably be better served by a different book than this one.