What's the Best Home Improvement Book?

Readers who're new to home improvement occasionally ask me for advice about which books they ought to buy if they want to get a good handle on the basics of home improvement and maintenance. Well, over the past few years I've had the opportunity of paging through a number of these, and I think I can safely say which is my favorite. Here they are:

1. Complete Photo Guide to Home Repair (by Black & Decker)
   Now, the title overstates the case a bit; it is not a "complete" guide to all things home repair. You cannot, for instance, find information about how to frame a wall anywhere in the book. It does, however, do a terrific job of making very plain how things are done with high quality, carefully thought-out photos. No other publisher went to as much trouble to build realistic sets which give the reader a good idea what to expect when he or she rips open a bathroom wall, or sets about replacing a ceiling fan.
2. Complete Home Improvement & Repair (by Lowes)
   This book covers some basic construction that the Black & Decker book does not, and is in general really a pretty good resource. However, the photos and sometimes even the prose don't quite convey what a new homeowner would need to know to tackle some of the jobs discussed. Again, it's good, and I'd recommend that you pick it up if the Black & Decker book isn't available to you (although Amazon renders this circumstance pretty unlikely).

Another outstanding resource for those who are contemplating new windows is Norton's Residential Windows: A Guide to New Technologies & Energy Performance (by J. Carmody, et al.). It's a solid 200 pages of well-written, helpfully illustrated information covering everything anyone would ever want to know about everything from gas fill to low emissivity to maintaining the historical look and feel in an older house while getting all the benefits of modern fenestration technology.

If you're looking for online resources, video is the way to go, and YouTube is positively teeming with free videos shot by sharp and experienced home improvement experts. Seeing it done in live action really helps to make learning easier, since home improvement is about as tactile as anything could be.