Learning Python is an excellent book. It is what I found most useful for learning the language. I bought and read many books, and this one is the best I found

Learning Python is an excellent book. It is what I found most useful for learning the language. I bought and read many books, and this one is the best I found. Conversely, Programming Python sucks, even though both are authored by the same person. (LP is co-authored.) The language docs from python.org are invaluable as a reference, which includes the tutorial. I invariably download the html tarball and put it on any machine I use for python programming.