I bought this book and am pretty pleased with it. It has a lot of useful information and much of it is in sequential tutorial form. The book also has 16 linux distributions that you can install. (1 cd and 1 dvd.) Some of these are "live cd" type and others the iso files to burn and run.
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470082798.html (http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470082798.html)
I also purchased The Official Ubuntu Guide and don't reccomend it. It is intended for the complete computer neophyte who wants to learn how to turn on a computer, surf the web and email etc.