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I'm learning Python on a computer with no access to the internet, I have the Python documentation on it but it lacks in several ways (no good introduction to threading, no examples on how to use the code...).

What are other books\resources that I can download and view offline for Python?

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Could you elaborate? Do you mean resources that are free for download? Ebooks are downloadable and can be used offline. – R.K. Jan 15 '12 at 3:47

closed as not constructive by Mark Trapp Jan 26 '12 at 1:22

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7 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

A sure must-read is Dive into Python. You can download it for offline use.

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up vote 4 down vote

Take a look at both and pick that you feel more comfortable:

I prefer the first one. The chapters are straightfoward, there are many practical examples that can be used as reference, including 10 Projects in the end of the book showing how to code a chat server, an arcade game, GUI, file sharing, how to deal with pdf's via python, and so on. If you want a practical book with real examples then that's a good one.

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Hi Daniel, you should expand your answer to tell us why you prefer "Beginning Python - From Novice to Professional", what's good about it, and how does it fare with OP's concerns: no good introduction to threading, no examples on how to use the code... – Yannis Rizos♦ Jan 15 '12 at 8:08
Done. Sorry for that. – Daniel Jan 15 '12 at 20:09
up vote 2 down vote

I'd have said "Python in a Nutshell", absolutely. The only problem is that I'd have said that several years ago - the most recent (second) edition was released in 2006. Actually, I'm surprised it's quite so long ago - I thought there was a third edition, but Google seems to say otherwise.

The official manual is good too - if you download a PDF rather than relying on the stuff bundled with the interpreter. See for example http://docs.python.org/download.html

The docs bundled with the interpreter seem unnecessarily difficult to use (problems finding the content due to linking issues). The PDF is I think the same document, but being a single PDF, there's easy workarounds for the navigation issues.

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One resource that's invaluable to me when online is the Python Standard Library documentation. You can download the entire stdlib docs for both python2 and python3

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up vote 0 down vote

I found "Learn Python The Hard Way" very nice apart from "Learning Python" by "Mark Lutz"... Free for download, and the smallest book about Python,and it actually teaches you Python...

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... compared to Lutz's book which is probably the largest book about Python :) (and from what I've read somewhere one of the largest in O'Reilly library. They don't usually publish books of about 1200 pages). – ldigas Jan 14 '12 at 19:30
Doesn't Zed Shaw charge for epub and pdf version? Only the html version's free as far as I know. – R.K. Jan 15 '12 at 3:46
He could very well save the html. :) Afterall, it is totally free. I too read the book online. The epub and pdf must have better formatting, etc. Content would be the same. – c0da Jan 15 '12 at 10:05
up vote 0 down vote

A Byte of Python is another good book and it's free, too :) It has versions for both Python 2 and 3.

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There is really a plethora of books on Python. Some of the more popular ones that serve as reference books are Learning Python, Python Essential Reference and Python Standard Library (all by O'Reilly).

Googling any of those titles puts the relevant title first on top.

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