5 comments about Visual Basic 2008 Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer).

1. This is a great book. Starting for the simplicity and going strong describing in simple language the complicated topics for the beginner to the advanced programmer in VB 2008(VB 9).
   
   I enjoyed the reading and I am not done yet with the book. And after reading some paragraphs again, have been able to find new details that allow me to improve my routines.
   
   Thank you Rod for the book.



2. I'm experienced with VB.Net but needed a quick reference book for the new features (esp. LINQ) and that would also provide an overview for features I might not otherwise discover.
   
   My first project with VB 2008 sent me right to the book. I was able to easily adapt code lifted right off the page on the first task. However, different code from the book for a second task was less successful (LINQing on a data set table). The syntax (in the book) for the ORDER BY clause was erroneous and raised a perplexing error. (Perhaps the Wrox web site corrects this; I haven't checked.) Googling brought me to a Microsoft web site with an example with the correct syntax.
   
   I guess you should expect such issues when applying 15th century technology (i.e., printed paper) to a bleeding edge tool.
   
   All in all, however, the book was worth the modest investment. Make use of Amazon's excerpts to evaluate it for your own needs (I did).
   
   By the way, the (first) one I received was damaged (crumpled pages, torn backcover) in packaging, but Amazon redeemed themselves by promptly sending an intact replacement.



3. A weighty tome with substance to match the heft. Mr. Stephens knows his material and knows how to make his knowledge accessible. This book has become a necessary adjunct all of my VB projects.



4. For the novice user this book will take you by the hand, and guide you through VB.NET from the IDE, to basic principles and concepts of OO programing, and into concrete examples, covering a vast amount of information. There is an incredible 200+ page appendix.
   
   Like most other books on the subject, the sections that cover parts of VB that I work with daily (and thus understand well) offered few new insights. The other 75% of the book has proved to be extremely helpful!
   
   If you truly "know" VB.NET '08 inside and out, then you don't need this book (or any others for that matter!), for the rest of us the useful information abounds.



5. I have taught programming for about 20 years in a local college. I have several other Rod Stephens books so when I needed a book to help me with the new features in Visual Basic 2008, this book was my first choice. I was not disappointed. At over 1000 pages it covers just about everything you might need, whether you are a beginner or an expert. The good explanations are backed up by good examples. I highly recommend it.

5 comments about Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture (The Addison-Wesley Signature Series).

1. As a newcomer to enterprise architecture this book educated me on possibilities for decisions to be made in designing an enterprise architect. It will also give you a language for describing existing characteristics of an existing enterprise application which may use some combination of the patterns describe in this book. The discussion of where to keep session state for a webapp was particularly helpful to me.



2. For me, this book is an invaluable reference for building business apps.
   
   Want help choosing a framework? Want some guidance for solving common business problems? These patterns help solve these kinds of problems.
   
   NOTE: I have tried to find other sources for these patterns, and I have only found Fowlers website, which is really only a summary and recommends purchasing the book.
   
   This book has examples in both Java and C#. You can certainly use these patterns in .NET.
   
   Under .NET you are not actually forced to use the Table Model. I think the purpose of this book is to help you realize this.
   
   There are frameworks for .NET that use the Domain Model and Data Mapper patterns, but you would never know this unless you were familiar with the patterns in this book.
   
   For me, reading this book didn't allow me to write new code, but it did allow me to understand my choice to use a particular framework/technique over another.



3. This is a must read book if you are a developer, architect or in anyway related to technology.



4. Even if you don't do "Enterprise Application" development, this book is a must have in your library. If you have been developing for more than a couple of years and you haven't seen 1/2 of the patterns in this book, then you are probably doing something wrong and this book could greatly help you.
   
   Even if you do know 1/2 or more of the patterns in this book it is a great reference to the details of these patterns. Unless you are a Sophomore Software Engineering Student I'd recommend this book over the GoF book. Gof is a must have too, but if you can only have one. Get this one!



5. This book is a complete beginner's handbook for enterprise patterns.
   
   1) The "Mapping to Relational Database Patterns" section discusses patterns that are completely intuitive. I recall logically coming to this conclusions when I started programming in Visual Basic in 99. Nothing new in this section.
   
   2) The "Concurrency" section is criminal in nature and assumes that the application runs on high-cost server. Process-per-session? Thread-per-request? Come on!! Has the author missed out on the Reactor, Proactor and Active Object patterns (he does reference ACE but only as a reference). These patterns have been recognized as not scalable in the late 90s.
   
   3)The distribution patterns are clearly incomplete and desire a lot of details.
   
   If you're just starting out,as a System Architect :-), you'll find this useful. Otherwise, use MSDN or ACE for enterprise patterns.

5 comments about ASP.NET 2.0 Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution (Programmer to Programmer).

1. This book is a great example of how to utilize VS 2005/Web 2.0 principles. There are a few components you can rip right out and utilize for other sites, it is a great addition to anyone's toolbox.



2. Even in the books preface, it says it's not a book for beginners. It's geared more toward asp.net developers that have at least dabbled in design using Visual Studio. The book is more or less one big practical example. I recommend it for the novice+ developers of ASP.NET.



3. The web site that this book creates by the end is a great example of a content management system. I don't get to program often, so seeing an implemented version of a 3-tier web site is valuable. The example in this book goes a long way to show (not just tell) why 3-tier design can be so beneficial. Lots of other great examples too that you would have a tough time finding in on-line forums, such as caching and paging directly from the database. I liked the extra touch of the last chapter, which provides the minute details for publishing your site to web server. All the examples are in c# only, which is the language that I prefer anyway.



4. This is one of the best software books I have read. The explanations are clear. There is a complete example for every step. He doesnt skip steps. His explanations are not verbose. His language is straighforward - I have yet to find a place where he uses "leverage". The text is written in VB which is not my first choice but the listings are all on disk in both VB & C# so I just browse the C# examples in Visual Studio as I read.
   
   This is NOT a beginners book. To benefit from this book, you must be proficient in VB or C#, OOP and events, know something about web pages, html, CSS etc and have a rudimentary understanding of databases. He does spend a fair amount of time explaining database interaction so this book would serve as a tutorial on SQL queries and connection strings. I expect too that experts in ASP classic would be bored by this book and find its pace too leisurely. I am a software developer with just a bit of experience in web technology and this book really hit the mark.
   
   Neither is this a reference book - although he does go into a lot of detail, the material is organized and chosen for instruction.



5. Nice book for website design and development. Author has done an excellent job explaining how to use DAL and BLL. I would recommend this book to anyone doing the web development.

5 comments about Advanced Windows Debugging (The Addison-Wesley Microsoft Technology Series).

1. Have you ever tried to debug a problem in a productive environment? Do you know how hard this can be, especially when you are not allowed to install or use your full Visual Studio environment? Or did you ever try to debug a problem which only happens at the customer's side? This book shows you how to do all of this, and much more. It shows you, for example, how to create and use a memory dump and how to set up and use remote debugging.
   
   And this is a very concentrated book. It covers a very wide area of expertise. It is an indispensable companion for every real world programmer. It explains in detail some of the lesser-known areas of programming infrastructure, like stacks and heaps and the RPC (DCOM) infrastructure, the possible error symptoms and their analysis.
   
   Did you know about the powerful tools in the Debugging Tools for Windows package? This book begins with an introduction to these tools. It shows you how to set up and use them. It introduces you to the user-mode and kernel-mode debuggers, the Global Flags, the Application Verifier and many other tools. All of them are available for free. And you can easily give them to your customers or to the IT department of your productive environment.



2. The focus is on debugging using tools other than Visual Studio. There is still a lot of useful information about other tools, but if you want to learn how to debug with the Visual Studio debugger, this is not the book to get.



3. A very good hands on book with many gems of knowledge. It walks you through the processes of different debugging techniques with easy to follow screen shots. I definitely recommend this to anyone writing Windows OS dependent code and it is even a very good book to read even if you are a .Net or Java developer on the windows platform. Even if you consider yourself advanced in this area you will still find a few new tricks.



4. Chapters on debugging heap/stack corruptions are simply invaluable. Worth reading even if you think you know everything about those issues, this book will easily prove you wrong.



5. This book has completely smashed every possible expectation I had when I set out to read it.
   
   Let me put it simply. There comes a time in every software developers' life when he contemplates the age old question of, "If I were to be stranded on an island and I could bring only 3 things with me, what would they be?" Well, this would be one of the 3 items. (The other two would be Windows Internals by Russinovich and some other obvious classic like the Windows via C/C++ by Richter, or UNIX Network Programming by Stevens). This book is easily on the same playing field as such classics as those, and its only flaw is that it is not 1,000 pages because when a book like this comes along, you really just don't want it to end. There is so much useful information in here.
   
   The chapter on LPC debugging is worth the price of the book alone, as LPC is completely undocumented and you literally will not find this type of information anywhere else. Every single chapter in this book is filled with gems, and with the plethora of average books being released recently, it really took me by surprise to read such a well thought out book that hits all the right topics in all the right ways.
   
   That being said, it is advanced. Yes, I realize the title says it, but too many books come out with the word Advanced in the title that are merely Intermediate. You need some assembly language, you need to be comfortable with native code, you need to not be frightened at the thought of debugging something for which you have no source code. But for those that meet the pre-requisites, this is a must-have in every sense of the word for the serious developers' bookshelf.

5 comments about Microsoft Windows Internals (4th Edition): Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000.

1. An excellent coverage of the Windows architecture. Very strong on using tools to examine the state of a machine, from the kernel debugger to the many tools written by one of the authors. Of course, Windows being closed-source, it isn't possible to show any of the source code (or pointers thereto) that allow us to see what really happens under the hood.



2. This book does a good job of walking you through the internals of threads, synchronization, memory, and the IO manager. However, it does NOT cover bus-related driver technologies (PCI, USB, 1394, ...). A good book to understand the Windows core, but I would have liked some USB and PCI internals to help driver developers produce higher quality USB and PCI drivers. A "theory" book that I will read once and refer back to infrequently. After reading it once, you can find much of what you need in the WDM header files or WinDBG.



3. I think the thing that's impressed me the most while reading through this book is just how hellishly complicated these operating systems really are - the number of situations that they have to handle - things they have to take into account - and the co-operation, co-ordination, and communication between the varies components is nothing short of phenominal.
   
   So to have a hope in hell of getting to grips with a beast like this, one really needs to start with solid foundations & accurate overviews - and that's what this book does. In fact, I believe that it's "standard issue" for new Microsoft employees. From the solid-foundation, the book branches out into all of the major areas that you'd expect.
   
   In all honesty it's NOT a "casual read" for anyone just getting into the IT "game", but for those (programmers, IT consultants, Network Engineers) who make the effort to digest it's contents, the payoff will be a MUCH deeper understanding of what's going on "under the hood" - information I've already put to good use in solving a relatively bizarre issue relatively quickly.
   
   I suspect that for many who's livelihood comes from working in these kinds of areas, the return on investment would come PDQ.



4. As a former Microsoft technical lead who was a part of the "core" Enterprise server support team I will tell you that this is the one book that is (still) handed out to all new members of our team!
   
   Within Microsoft server support this book is the architecture "bible".
   
   Also David and Mark's elegant shareware tools were also the only 3rd party tools that were sanctioned for recommendation to Microsoft customers.
   
   This book is the defacto standard for all things relating to Windows architecture. Not always an easy read, but if you are persistent and just keep re-reading (which is what I had to do for a long time!) eventually it will sink in, and when it does you will understand (and appreciate) Windows on a very low level.
   
   Highly recommended!
   
   Vic Rozumny
   
   btw- MS recently bought sysinternals and you will be redirected when you go to the site. Congrats guys.



5. Maybe half of the world is using Microsoft windows, administering, troubleshooting etc. Everybody know how to click(and maybe know which one) the checkbox, but less than 0.1% knows what is hapening inside, "deep in the water". How data is passed from your program too network interface, or to disk drive? This book will giva many answers, but not all. And unfortunately, as I know, maybe this book is the only one in the world about this subject(if I am wrong, please correct me). It is not an easy reading, you have to know something more about operating systems to understand it. But to cover most of the windows, it should have 2 volumes and 2000 pages. I kindly ask Mr Russinovich and Microsoft to publish more book like this.
   This book is not about active directory or how to recipes. It is about kernel, I/o subsistem, memory, etc. Read the content(search inside). About windows inside, i know only one other book, Inside windows storage, but this is about only one segment of windows, and not so deep.(but also good read for "brave" sysadmins)

2 comments about GO! with Microsoft Office 2007 Introductory (Go! Series).

1. book was a good price, sold with the course disc, only the disc was for the 2003 course.



2. I purchased this book for my oldest daughter who is not familiar with computers. I had seen it as a textbook at our local community college. It has very easy step-by-step exercises & really shows all the ins & outs that Office 2007 has to offer.

5 comments about C# 3.0 Design Patterns.

1. I bought several copies of this book to teach my development team design patterns. I have a copy of and like the Head First design patterns book, but my guys wanted to learn some of the new C# 3.0 features and judging from the other reviews I thought this would be a decent book.
   
   Boy was I wrong. Do not trust the positive reviews. The examples and coresponding code samples are flat wrong. I don't mean code won't compile, I mean they don't teach the purpose of the design patterns or blatently defeat the pupose of them. I am only up to chapter 3 and I am having to create cheatsheets that show how the patter REALLY should work. If anyone is reading this and really wants to learn the design patterns, I would recommend the Head First or the original Gang of Four books. Beware, if you don't know design patterns and use this to learn you will be shooting yourself in the foot.



2. As with all books on patterns, I had high expectations from this book. I was really hoping that the author would have introduced new patterns utilizing new 3.0 language features that I have not yet thought of on my own, but was disappointed to see that the book is mostly another poorly written book on design patterns that happened to use C#.
   
   After realizing that the book was what it was, I was hoping that she would have done something a bit on the cutting-edge side of things by fusing new C# 3.0 language constructs and design patterns, but again, disappointed. The application of C# 3.0 features throughout the book seemed to be more of a showcase ("hey look what I can do") as opposed to practical or necessary.
   
   If you understand that this book is just another patterns book and doesn't introduce new patterns or really take advantage of new C# 3.0 language features, this book is ok. On a positive note, the book is a simple read. But if you're looking for a really solid book on patterns for the bookshelf, the gang of four patterns book (1994) is still the way to go.



3. This book was poor. The source code has errors. It does a poor job at explaining the issue a pattern is attempting to address. Made me very sleepy. If you want a good primer get "Heads Up Design Patterns", if you want more get the GOF book.



4. Lets face it design patterns are something that we have to have but at the same token are usually difficult to understand where it should be used and how to create it. With design patterns C# 3.0 By Judith Bishop we have a little more help.
   
   From structural patterns to Behavorial we can all feel a bit better in designing our tiers for robustness and making things just a slight more easier on ourselves. When i had to create a protected class for an application that i was working on. I had difficulty creating protecting it from instantiation with the guidance in this book i was able to complete the application in less time and focus on other areas of code that needed improvements. I also found use for the decorator pattern, while i will admit some patterns in the book seem like a lot of work to include in an application Bishop makes the case for each one and also describes situations where patterns may be become anti pattern for example using the Singleton pattern to hold static information as a global variable.
   
   Overall, the quality of this book is top notch (figures since it is a O'reily book) and offers many sections on how to enhance your coding practices to make best of your limited time and also of your program. The examples in the book are superb and offer a introduction to what i feel is one of the more complex ways of designing a program. It also has a fair bit of UML diagrams and is "decent" practical guide to also adhering to UML based designs.
   
   Something though i wish they had in this book were more samples, at times there seems to be decent coverage on some of the easier patterns (singleton) and not so much on the more convoluted patterns like Model View Controller. While she does try to create a balanced ground sometimes, i have to re-read the section because she gets to technical sometimes. I guess with time and over the years her thoughts should become more clear.
   
   - Mike



5. Overall, the book seemed pretty useful. Some of the patterns covered in the book are probably rarely used in the real world, but others are design patterns that we use as software developers pretty constantly without realizing it. Getting a formal definition of what those are, and all the different parts involved ... as well as when it is a good idea to use it or what other pattern might be a better fit really offers some value. It was a pretty short book, so I thought it was worth the investment of time to read it.

5 comments about Head First Software Development (Brain-Friendly Guides).

1. Head First Software Development is another home run from the Head First series. I have bougth the HTML/CSS, Design Patterns, Object-Oriented Analysis & Design, and now this book. These "Brain-Friendly Guides" are such wonderful learning tools packed with great information, and so much fun to read. Keep them coming!



2. The way this book is writen is just fantastic. Wonderful book to LEARN how to develop GOOD software.



3. I've been eyeballing the Head First books for a while, specifically the Java and Object-Oriented Analysis & Design. I don't program in Java and I think I understand OOP very well. Because of this, the Head First structure looks to offer a bit less structure - so a good "read as you can" book.
   
   I got this title in a raffle. I'm glad I did. It whetted my appetite for more Head First. Not so much for the content (Which I will review further down) but because it's almost like reading a comic book. Easy, entertaining and something my busy dizzy mind could readily grasp in small chunks. I will probably get another Head First book in the future. Probably more than one.
   
   As for the content of this book, it was well laid out and for someone new to the concepts of formal software design, it was nice to see all the little pieces come together. I did have a hard time with the Java specific environment, but I guess it would be a much larger book if they covered other systems. The steps were clear, some of them a smidge corny, but most of them logical.
   
   After having read this, I was inspired to put it to use. That's when it hit me. I can't see this working unless the entire development group reads the book - or they were all newbies. Well I can see it, just not in the places I've worked.



4. Although I was initially put off by the non-serious cover and gimmicky premise, I decided to trust to O'Reilly and give this book a try. That turned out to be a great decision!
   
   Be forewarned that the real title should be "Head First AGILE Software Development," so don't expect other methodologies, but it definitely delivers. Whether you're just beginning to take the plunge into agile development, or you've been sort of trying to do it for a while but don't have a real clear picture of your goal, this is a great book for you.
   
   However, if you've been developing agilely for a while, then what you'll find here isn't much more than a refresher course or reminder of how you should be doing things.



5. I first lend this book from collage developer an have read with great enthusiasms and finally ordered my own copy of this book.
   The book gives detailed information on how to developing software from scratch, taken you by hand and leading you de hole way step by step.
   With the different way to present the information en with lot of illustrations its newer a boring read.
   
   Anders Kjaer
   
   [...]

5 comments about Bulletproof Web Design: Improving flexibility and protecting against worst-case scenarios with XHTML and CSS (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter).

1. I am very skeptical about the value of IT related books. Having been in the industry for 17 years I have read very few that deliver what I am looking for and instead have tended to rely upon articles from disparate sources across the web.
   
   There are of course exceptions - and this book is a shining example of how to make a subject understandable for many levels of experience AND be of value to all.
   
   If you are interested in making your site CSS friendly, want to unravel what all the various things mean, or have a working knowledge of CSS and want to go beyond what most average developers know about CSS then I would strongly recommend buying this book. It won't solve world hunger, but it will solve many of your CSS questions and designs.



2. After building enough sites from scratch, and wanting to make darn sure they were browser friendly and accessible, I got this book due to it addressing cross-browser problems and techniques for accessibility.
   
   Now the practical knowledge in this book is great. It's the no-hold-bars dirty hacking of CSS/XHTML to force it to work in browsers, and address how to get sites to be more accessible (like addressing text sizing that scales accordingly in IE 7 and FF, and to look similar in each browser). Added benefit it even shows you how to tweak the Blogger Tic-Tac template, to be even better -- for beginning bloggers, this is very sweet.
   
   But, I learned that this book is geared to the 10% of the web browser market (Firefox), which meant code examples to experiment with weren't friendly to IE 7. Worse, the code explanations were quite elementary -- dictation/narrative style -- which didn't give me enough info to know WHAT I was doing. Efforts to tweak examples (like in Chapter 4) required over an hour trying to get the floats to not break, if I resized them -- all because the explanations were so scant to know what variables to tweak.
   
   Really wanted to like this book, as it's tailored for two main headaches in web design (cross-browser friendliness; accessibility tweaking) that's not often covered in other CSS/(X)HTML books. Alas, the search is on for a CSS/XHTML book that is truly cross-browser friendly. :/



3. This book is very readable, and the examples are presented in building block style, step by step. Practical benefits of XHTML and CSS are provided, and the code needed for the samples to work in the major browsers. I highly recommend the book!



4. I purchased this book in the hopes it would have fixed my floating issues. It did, to a point. A couple of the examples didn't work well with Firefox. I found this book was helpful to fix a few things, but I did find that I was able to find other fixes online. I still enjoy this book, I just wish it worked better with Firefox browsers.



5. This is easily the best CSS book I have ever owned. It's very easy to read and provides excellent, and sadly few, examples. Most importantly, the author does a wonderful job helping the reader understand concepts and how and why certain things are implemented.
   
   Other books are FULL of examples... although they usually lack the details that someone like me need. The details, writing, and illustrations make this book much more attractive. Sure, Bulletproof Web Design isn't the end-all of books of this nature. It's short. You'll need more books. But any serious developer needs to read this book.
   
   If you like "Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug, then you'll adore this one as well.

5 comments about Python in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly)).

1. 
   The author Alex Martelli is Uber Technical Lead at Google, Inc. Martelli holds a laurea in Ingegneria Elettronica from Bologna University. He wrote Python in a Nutshell two editions, and also co-edited the Python Cookbook. He's a member of the Python Software Foundation, and won the 2002 Activators' Choice Award. Martelli spent 8 years with IBM Research, earning three Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards, and on.
   
   The book is a great reference and full of insights and good programming techniques. It moves pretty fast to make a good introductory book, but once one has a reasonable understanding of Python fundamentals, anyone wishing to advance their understanding and application of the language can benefit from Python in a Nutshell.
   
   I found that this book has been able to cover every thing from fundamentals of the Python language to a comprehensive description of some of the more esoteric newer language features and at the same time address many of the applications of the language. The presentation style is clear and very readable with concise examples, and not full of extraneous fluff. The subjects are well laid out beginning with a swift comprehensive introduction to the language, and a good description of the basic elements including classes, methods exceptions, modules, decorators and built-ins. There are sections on the Python library and extension modules, Network and web programming including some discussion of some of the existing python web frame works and socket programming. There is material on extending and embedding Python and alternate ways to extend python beyond c-extensions. The book was released just prior to the final release of Python 2.5, but there is considerable material covering most if not all of the latest 2.5 features such as the with statement.
   
   I have found Python in a nutshell 2nd edition a valuable learning tool and reference resource and would recommend it for anyone interested in using Python to its fullest.
   
   
   Reviewed by Max Slimmer user and proponent of Python since release 1.3.



2. This is simply the best reference book for Python.
   
   As a reference book it not suitable for learning Python from scratch, even if there is a not-so-short introduction to the basic language features. The book is well organized and informations can be found quickly.
   
   The only con is a bad index. It is really complete, but sub-topics are organized as a tree without any graphical feedback of the current indentation level, and often you do not understand wich topic they belong to.
   
   The 2nd edition of the book was published on July 14, 2006 and is obviously highly recommended: Python in a Nutshell (In a Nutshell (O'Reilly))



3. 'Python In A Nutshell' is one of those de facto standard O'Reilly books that is required reading/owning for anyone that develops in said language. In this case it's the long time popular scripting language Python. Originally released in 1991, this language has grown and expanded into the juggernaut it is today. With around 700 pages of material, this book will show you the ins and outs of everything yummy that Python can do. From the basics of talking about to define variables and create conditional statements to object oriented programming, you are going to quickly see why Python is popular and USABLE.
   
   This book goes further than just a teaching book and/or just a language reference. It's meant to bridge both necessities as you learn to progam in Python or want to improve your existing skillset. With this book you will achieve all your Python goalssssssssssssssssssssss (pathetic snake joke attempt here)
   
   ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED



4. The documentation that comes with Python leaves a lot to be desired. Try understanding and using internationalisation, for example. Any help that comes along will be welcome, especially in the form of examples.
   Alex Martelli really knows his stuff and it's very convenient to have the information by your side in this format, so even if it's a little condensed at times I would recommend this book as well as Python Cookbook, for advanced examples.
   I do wish that Python 2.1 Bible would come out in a new edition: it was fantastic for basic sample code.



5. I keep coming back to this book, either to clarify what other books needlessly complicate or simply don't include. As a nutshell book, I would say it is more of a fairly comprehensive reference. Its discussion and explanation of python elements, which tend to make it more of a comprehensive manual and less of a nutshell are very much appreciated. The book's well thought out layout and well self-sustained sections allow you to actually sit down and read this book to learn from and not just use as a passing reference from time to time. I pair this book with Beazley's Python, Essential Reference, which I think actually takes more of a 'nutshell spirit of presentation'. Between the two, they are my most often go-to books while in the coding process.