just ran into a post discussing beginning books about rails, so I collected all the book names in it. hope it helps. lol :) “Beginning Ruby on Rails” by Steven Holzner The Rails Way Agile Web Development with Ruby on Rails Simply Rails 2 Agile Web Development v.3 (Beta PDF available at PragProg.com) The Art of Rails Advanced Rails Recipes Ruby for Rails by David A. Black Learning Rails (O’Reilly) * Learning Ruby (O’Reilly, 2007) * The Ruby Programming Language (O’Reilly, 2008) * Ruby Pocket Reference (O’Reilly, 2007) * Programming Ruby, Third Edition (Pragmatic Programmers, 2008) * Head First Rails (O’Reilly, 2008), for a much more visual approach with exercises * Up and Running with Rails, Second Edition (O’Reilly, 2008), for a very quick start * Simply Rails 2 (SitePoint, 2008) * The Rails Way (Addison-Wesley, 2007), a big-book reference approach for developers who already know their way * Rails Pocket Reference (O’Reilly, 2008), a small-book reference * Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition (Pragmatic Programmers, 2008), for a detailed explanation of a wide range of features. * Enterprise Rails (O’Reilly, 2008), for building large-scale applications * Advanced Rails (O’Reilly, 2008), for when you want to move to the next level “Foundation Rails 2” a little out of date, and its new version is the following one “The Well-Grounded Rubyist” covers only ruby, but in the version of 1.9.1