Learning Python

Have read over half of Learning Python by Mark Lutz (O'Reilly). A good read.

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.

I read about half of Dive Into Python, and it was pretty advanced stuff. It's good if you know another programming language very well. The book starts out slow, but the difficulty curve accelerates very fast. I wouldn't read it cover to cover. It would be a good reference to have though. I'd suggest skimming the table of contents of both books first. Then again, Dive Into Python is free, so you might as well start with that, and if it's too advanced, switch to Learning Python (I read the first 100 pages of it last summer, and I thought it was good, I'm a fan of O'Reilly). If you really want a beginner book, Learning Python is a great choice. It was just updated too. Good luck.

I found Learning Python + the python tutorial by Guido on python.org to be a great way to start