This book is an unbeatable introduction to the Lua programming language, as might be expected considering it's written by the language's creator. However, the book is also an excellent guide to programming in general, because Roberto explains concepts which are applicable in most other languages. Maybe this is because Lua was designed primarily as a 'glue' or 'embedded' language. The author's ability to explain complex ideas is outstanding. You may have to re-read a paragraph a couple of times to fully 'get' it, but once you do everything just clicks.



Also, don't expect this book to be limited to an introduction to the language. That introduction is pretty solidly handled in the first 60 pages or so. For your money, you also get information on integrating your Lua code with your C code, techniques for coroutines and multi-threading, and advanced uses of the Lua table object (including object-oriented programming).



But wait -- there's more! There's a run-through of Lua's standard libraries which is not your standard printout of the online documents -- it's full of useful, progressive examples. I found the string library documentation particularly useful. Just by reading the table of contents you'll see that this is a very well-thought-out book, and I can vouch for its execution being excellent as well.