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title: "Ruby Compendium – Books"
content-type: page
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<nav class="navigation"><a href="/ruby-compendium/book/web-sites.html">← Web Sites</a> | <a href="/ruby-compendium/book/index.html">Contents</a> | <a href="/ruby-compendium/book/podcasts.html">Podcasts and Screencasts →</a></nav>

	<p><strong><a href="http://www.humblelittlerubybook.com/book/">The Humble Little Ruby Book</a></strong> &ndash; A nicely-written free book on Ruby, by <a href="/ruby-compendium/book/rubyists.html#jm">Jeremy McAnally</a></p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://www.sapphiresteel.com/The-Little-Book-Of-Ruby">The Little Book of Ruby</a></strong> &ndash; An 87-page free introduction covering Ruby basics.</p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Blog/The-Book-Of-Ruby-free-in-depth">The Book of Ruby</a></strong> &ndash; A 400-page free Ruby bible by Huw Collingbourne.</p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://ruby-doc.org/docs/ProgrammingRuby/">Programming Ruby</a></strong> &ndash; The first edition of the so-called <em>Pickaxe</em> book, available for free, by <a href="/ruby-compendium/book/rubyists.html#davethomas">Dave Thomas</a>, <a href="/ruby-compendium/book/rubyists.html#chad">Chad Fowler</a> and <a href="/ruby-compendium/book/rubyists.html#andyhunt">Andy Hunt</a></p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/">Why&#8217;s (poignant) guide to Ruby</a></strong> &ndash; The legendary book by <a href="/ruby-compendium/book/rubyists.html#_why">why the lucky stiff</a>. With foxes, little elves, and&#8230; chunky bacon!). Exquisitely weird and witty.</p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://ruby.runpaint.org/">Read Ruby 1.9</a></strong> &ndash; <em>&#8220;Very early draft of a book about version 1.9 of the Ruby programming language, released under a Creative Commons license.&#8221;</em></p>

	<p><strong><a href="http://ruby.learncodethehardway.org/">Learn Ruby The Hard Way</a></strong> &ndash; A Ruby translation of the popular book <em>Learn Python The Hard Way</em>, by Zed Shaw.</p>
<aside class="box">
<div class="box-title">What about <em>real</em> books?</div>
<p>All the books mentioned so far are free, but there&#8217;s plenty of published books on Ruby. Check out the following titles:</p>
<ul>
	<li><a href="http://www.informit.com/imprint/series_detail.aspx?ser=2124042">Addison-Wesley Progessional Ruby Series</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://oreilly.com/pub/topic/ruby">Ruby books by O&#8217;Reilly</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://pragprog.com/categories/ruby_and_rails">Ruby books by Pragmatic Programmers</a></li>
</ul>

</aside>
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