Maya 5 Savvy [With CD]

It's a very good book for those that are looking to learn Maya and to not want to buy more then one book.

This is an excellent SECOND Maya book, for use after the introductory tutorials and before the advanced books on specific topics. It's a solid overview of the big Maya topics--modeling, rigging, lighting, keyframe animation, dynamics, particles, MEL. In fact, it's the most comprehensive overview I was able to find. I read it to get a sense of the big-picture concepts, rather than pick my way through the tutorials themselves. That "Mighty Muskrat" project is pretty lame artistically, but the authors know their stuff technically, and they communicate it very well.