Pro Drupal Development written by core developers John VanDyk and Matt Westgate, the book is intended to help new developers climb up the Drupal learning curve quickly.
The book covers Drupal 5, from creating a basic module to in-depth documentation of the menu system and form API. Many heavy hitters in the Drupal community contributed to the book by reviewing drafts and offering suggestions and improvements. Among them were Károly Négyesi, Steven Wittens, Angela Byron, Heine Deelstra, John Resig, Ted Serbinski, Nathan Haug, Jeff Eaton, Gábor Hojtsy, and Neil Drumm. In addition to reviewing chapters, Dries wrote the foreword.
Here is the table of contents:
1. How Drupal Works
2. Writing a Module
3. Module-Specific Settings
4. The Menu System
5. Working with Databases
6. Working with Users
7. Working with Nodes
8. The Theme System
9. Working with Blocks
10. The Form API
11. Manipulating User Input: The Filter System
12. Searching and Indexing Content
13. Working with Files
14. Working with Taxonomy
15. Caching
16. Sessions
17. Using jQuery
18. Localization
19. XML-RPC
20. Writing Secure Code
21. Development Best Practices
22. Optimizing Drupal
23. Installation Profiles
APPENDIX A: Database Table Reference
APPENDIX B: Resources
