There are quite a few good books online. These have a broad scope, similar to O'Reilly's "Learning Python":
- Dive into Python by Mark Pilgrim
- How to think like a computer scientist: Learning with Python by Jeffrey Elkner, Allen B. Downey, and Chris Meyers
- Python Programming (WikiBook)
- The Python Tutorial is the "official" introduction to the language
Python.org maintains two lists of for learning python, depending on your level of programming expertise:
- Python for Non-programmers
- Python for Programmers
I highly recommend "Python Essential Reference" by David Beazley. You might find this sufficient if you're an experienced programmer and want a concise and comprehensive overview of the language. If you're a novice programmer this probably won't provide enough hand-holding. While I learned Python from other books, this is—by far—the most useful python book I own. Some notes:
- This is a reference book not a tutorial
- The first 125 pages are a complete overview of the language. It's not a tutorial, but it covers the language from top to bottom
- If you're an experienced programmer, this should be enough to learn the language
- If you're a novice programmer, start with a different tutorial
- The rest of the book is a comprehensive and extremely useful reference
- The 3rd edition covers up to python 2.4, but not beyond.
- The 4th edition is due for release in July 2009
Note: I originally posted the same/similar answer to: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/934937/concise-python-book-recommendation/935081#935081
I was asked to put a copy of my answer here.
