the books are updated from Maya versions before Autodesk and from when Maya was owned by Alias Wavefront then Alias. From experience of the Learning book, back at version 3 I'd go with that as it covers the basics from modelling thru texturing to animation and rendering. Hopefully theyve also corrected the typos in them too as there were a few things incorrectly written for example a translate command should have actually been a rotate. Ive gone thru some of the chapters in other maya books and penned over it incase I lend them to people. But then theres plenty here to learn from...and its free in some cases cheers Jay