“Despite the increasingly high profile of the Python programming
language, good books on the subject have been frustratingly scarce.
The original Internet Programming With Python has been out of print
for some time, and O’Reilly’s offering has been felt by many to be
not quite up to the level of that publisher’s other books. So a new
book about Python is certain to raise some degree of interest.
Happily, the Python Essential Reference by David Beazley is a high
quality work which should be well received by Python hackers
everywhere.”
“The book weighs in at just over 300 pages, which makes it
positively skinny among the current crowd of technical books, which
are seemingly sold by the pound. Those pages are packed however
(partly due to the use of a relatively small font; some of the more
visually-challenged readers may end up grumbling a bit). One thing
this book does not have, unfortunately, is a lay-flat binding.
Thus, to use it while working, one must put somebody else’s
700-page tome over the book to hold it open.”
“The Python Essential Reference is a marvel of
conciseness. The tutorial introduction is dispensed with in
ten pages, yet manages to touch on all the important features of
the language. The next 75 pages go over the language in detail.
Again, the treatment is very concise, but also complete. Your
reviewer, who considers himself a reasonably experienced Python
hacker, learned several things while reading those chapters.”