[curiousfab]

I will additionally suggest the "ARRL Handbook" (there's a new edition every year - mine was 2001 and I guess there is no need to get the latest one), from which I learned everything about electronics, antennas and radio propagation during my high school years. It not only enabled me to build and experiment with ham radio transceivers, but also gave me quite a head start into my university studies of EE.

[cweagans]

ARRL Handbook is great, but I would suggest picking it up after someone has their license. Personally, I found it really frustrating to have a gigantic book full of interesting things that I wasn’t legally allowed to do - it was a much better book after I had my license :)