David Beasley's Essential Python (New Riders). It's a little dated now (covers only up to version 2.2) but lucid, consise, well organized. It restricts itself to Python's syntax and semantics and does not waste time explaining basic programming concepts.
I made several attempts to learn Python but found the Python docs pretty poor, and the tutorial books I looked at were incredibly ponderous and slow. It wasn't until I got Beasley's book that I could actual find info effectively enough to start actually writing Python code. I still most often refer to it in preference to the Python docs. "David Rasmussen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > What is the best book for Python newbies (seasoned programmer in other > languages)? > > /David -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
