i would try and stay away from something that is distrobution excentric. ie, dont just get a book that deals with fedora or redhat or what ever other dists there are. learning linux itself without being tied to a particual distro would be my recomendation.
even though the basics are the same / simular on most distros they do vary enough to cause some confusion.
that "linux in a nutshell" book appears to be just that. it is only a reference by the looks, so i would assume some prior knowledge might be required.
i would think the "linux bible" might be a better choice. it comes with a bunch of distro's all on one dvd (including my fav: gentoo) which leads me to believe the book is more of a general linux book. ive read a few of the "bible" type books, and allthough i havent read that particular one, the ones i have for python, perl, and javascript are all really well written.
