[btschaegg]

> That said, too many books also teach C as if it was the reader's first language.

I feel that's quite a general problem with programming languages. Many languages could actually profit from books that assume that the reader knows a couple of mainstream languages and explain the respective language's intricacies from that perspective -- also in a much smaller format.

I'd buy a small book (say the size of K&R or "the AWK programming language") for many interesting languages in a heartbeat.