Lemm just say that I bought Maya 4.0 Fund and then 4.5 came out - irregardless of that - I found the books to be quite the useless. I wouldn't recommend them. Junky, confusing, and very very superficial and a lot of things I needed to know the book doesn't even cover. You'll learn so little you'll get pissed off. It's a very very newbie book which won't be looked at past a couple of weeks. Mine has not even been looked at since. Stick with the maya online help, online tutorials or

these

JAejin Chon ' s Character animation book. Stupendous!

Maya Savvy 4.5 - confusing as hell but detailed, and makes you think. at least the information is there albeit needing a bit of work to get an understanding.

Maya 4.5 Bible (EXCELLENT) - Probably one of the best generalist ones (but it also goes really detailed into lots of stuff). Cheap, thick and good. The cdrom is screwy on PCs - the tutorial files won't show up on a PC but will on a mac - you can download them from their website or copy the files on a mac and reburn. Excellent.