This is a great book, it walks you through every aspect of SL. It even shows basic building and content creation in Second Life. If you are looking for an introduction this book is not bad. Some of it can be a bit confusing since SL has redesigned the user interface since this book's screen shots were made. However, its not hard to figure out!

The bad news - it's expensive for what you get.
The good news - it gives you clear and illustrated instructions to get you going. Plus some exercises so you have something to try once you get into the Second Life grid.

The book "A beginner's Guide to Second Life" gives a good introduction on basic topics,
such as objects texturing and building, Orientation Island, Help
Island, places where to find items of various kind, how to take
pictures and movies/snapshots, and so on. Moreover, the book faces
other interesting topics, such as avatar modification to change its
aesthetic, land management, and how to get free money -- a suggestion
that's always useful especially to the beginners.

A very good point is that this book seems to be more practical than
the official guide, therefore, it provides lot of useful details that
are extremely useful for the beginners. Unfortunately, the Linden
Scripting Language -- a very interesting topic -- is not faced at all.

For instance, among the topics faced in the book, Telereport is
explained with a good detail. Moreover, the author clarifies some
issues with respect to the Telereport itself. Sometimes, in fact, the
Telereport does not properly work. Therefore, once we have looked up
for a place P, we might be transported to a different place (useful
information to avoid unpleasant headache for the newbies). Likewise,
searching for a pattern does not always produce the desired effect -- looking for "sand box" is different than looking for "sandbox".

Second Life is a place where you can acgtually learn.
There are many real Universities who provide classroom hours,
lectures, conferences and simposiums.
It is a place where you can learn how to run business,
how to construct, design, and build super architectural structures.
It is a fun place also, to go skydiving or swim in the ocean,
and it is certainly a great place to make friends.

In order to be able to be an active happy participant of the Second Life world, you need to learn how to quit bumbing your avatar into corners, not step on each other's feet, not to fall into ocean while flying, and not to accidentally dress into a LAMPSHADE instead of the new clothes you've just gotten...

A Beginner's Guide to Second Life is a textbook for newbies, an absolute necessity, if you want to improve sooner and lear the basics of how to BE in this amazing environment full of wonders and great opportunities!

This book is not as pretty as some of the other books on Second Life, but it has plenty of useful information for the beginner. It's occasionally a little snarky about newbies, but that's my only complaint. I would have given it 5 stars if the illustrations had been better. I found it well worth the money and still refer to it while my 2 other books on SL are gathering dust.