I have a metre of bookshelf of Python books, but there is one that is really dog-eared. It is out of print, but can be picked up on Amazon. Be careful not to get the second edition, it is a completely different book by a different author that is not the same format and is not useful. Some reprints are very poor quality too.
"Python" by Chris Fehily, Peachpit Press ISBN 0-201-74884-3.
The simple layout, examples and explanations are just the right level for writing scripts. True, it was written for Python 2.2 but there are other books for version 2.7 or 3000.
I bought "The Quick Python Book", Ceder, Manning which covers Python 3 and have not found it useful.
