Rating: 

It's an excellent reference, it covers more areas than the other books I've read and in the Network and Web Programming part it compares different frameworks for writing Internet applications. It was from this parts recommendation that I started to use twisted that has turned out to be really great for making advanced server and client applications.

Beginners should not start with this book, but rather Learning Python 1^st edition (the 2^nd ed. is a bit longish and explains too much for beginners) or even better: Quick Python. However, both of these are a bit out of date.