I've been looking through O'Reilly's online Safari library and have only been able to find their "Shortcuts" Powershell command reference. In terms of great books, is there anything out their yet that is worth our time?

I haven't had a chance to read any of them yet, but Microsoft is recommending three books. 

The first is Bruce Payette's Windows PowerShell in Action (Manning Publications, February 2007), which introduces the PowerShell language and shows you how to use it. Bruce co-designed the PowerShell language, so he also provides insights into why PowerShell works the way it does. This book intrigues me the most and is first on my reading list.

The second book is Windows PowerShell: TFM (SAPIEN Press, December 2006) by Don Jones and Jeffery Hicks. They collaborated on another scripting book Advanced VBScript for Windows Administrators. According to the book's Web page, readers will be creating PowerShell scripts after the second chapter, even if they don't have any prior PowerShell or other scripting experience. I'd really be interested if readers find this to be the case. 

 

The last book is Monad: Introducing the MSH Command Shell and Language (O'Reilly, December 2005) by Andy Oakley, who is a Microsoft programmer. As the title implies, this book was written a while ago. Although it has good reviews, you have to wonder whether it's now outdated.

 

I've got both the books metioned above.

The one by Peyette is pretty good but I'm only into chapter 2 so its still  real heavy on why the decisions were made for the various parts of the language.

 The TFM manual is more focused on actually writing code with a bent towards the Primal scripting products; no worries there as they work for Primal. 

I found the Monad book good and pretty accurate so far; although I read it last year during a trip to Interop (yeah, I'm a geek...my wife lets me know).

I am an admin and not a programmer so the Peyette book so far has been a little deeper into it that I really care to go.  Altough I must admit that his writing style is easy to read and it is interesting to get the backstory on how Powershell came to be.

I also grabbed  Microsoft Windows Powershell Programming for the Absolute Beginner.  If you don't know the first thing about programming or scripting, this is the one to start with, IMHO.

Thanks for the scoop on these books! I'll add Microsoft Windows PowerShell Programming for the Absolute Beginner to the list of PowerShell references we've started. I also might just nab a copy of that book.