Anyone use books?

[Comrade Ravenhawk]

I found that having a book that walked you through things was very helpful when I was learning VB.
Can anyone recommend a good one for PHP?

[Zeggy]

Sam's Tech Yourself PHP?
I have this book and it helped me a lot. The Sam's series are great

[Mgccl]

I recommend this one

[Carrion]

I recommend this one

I second this. I have the first version and it really helped me get up to speed fast! Out of the many books I have, this is one that was by far the best in my opinion

[beam]

I used Wrox's PHP Programming. It's a pretty good book, did way more for me than tutorials.

[Chris]

O'Reilly "PHP Almanach" and "MySQL Almanach" perfect for those who already know C and want to switch to PHP. Very compact, brief list of functions without explanation "what variable is".

[Dasein Fiasco]

I want to go on record saying that anything by O'Reilly is generally good to great; they're an amazing publishing company with a very competent editorial staff. Wrox has really fallen off in the last few years. They were once good, but recently they've focused on publishing books that champion any new buzzworthy technology, books that they rush to the shelves in hopes to win sales through novelty what they've sacrificed in quality control. O'Reilly is more likely to be late to market, but with much more substantial material that isn't riddled with typos and code samples stillborn with compilation errors. Of course, there are also many great small press publishers as well.