I'm a beginner at the Ruby language, having programmed in ASM,C,Java and PHP before. I've skimmed or partially read quite a few Ruby books. I settled on this book after my partial reads of the others and finding them a bit hard to grasp. The topics and syntax was just not sticking very well. Many of them seem written by programmers who know and explain the language well but don't sufficiently cover the why's/what-for's. Or they just don't seem to flow very well, from topic to topic or chapter to chapter. After reading the reviews here I started reading this book and found the style really great. At 25% through this book now, I can say I completely agree that this one is the best for someone new to Ruby. The writing style is great, like a good teacher/course and gives good insights into what's going on behind the scenes - something that i think helps the content "stick".