Stick with proven authors, Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto is a great book.
Peace, Love, & Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue - by Mike Mills & Amy Mills Tunnicliffe
http://www.amazon.com/Peace-Love-Ba...099/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422018351
This wonderful book about the world of barbecue is often humorous and with some recipes that people would gladly have given their eye teeth for over the years. Some of the greatest names in traditional american cooking are represented; the book is a treasure trove of information and the stories Mills relates are the type one usually only gets to hear late at night after more than a few beers while the hog is slowly roasting away.
Just the chapter on the "Secrets" would be worth the price of the book. Additionally, the "Magic Dust" recipe will leave you wanting to run to the store and make up a batch just to shake directly on your tongue! The book just isn't a "recipe" or "cook book", it's all about what people think and do for the love of food, but not limited to just barbecue. This book will set you straight on many "urban legends" and point your smoker the right direction in how to make lip smacking BBQ.
Smoke & Spice: Cooking with Smoke, the Real Way to Barbecue - by Cheryl Alters Jamison & Bill Jamison
http://www.amazon.com/Smoke-Spice-C...36X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422190900
The updated edition also offers a number of recipes for non-traditional barbecue and complimentary side dishes. The book starts with some extremely generalized discussions of grills and also is extremely repetitive in trying to describe direct v. indirect grilling v. extremely basic description of smoking and BBQ.
As a beginner, I would avoid the "Weber" books... Although these books have great photography, they contain some complex recipes allowing you to make gourmet style foods on the grill. This doesn't mean the book is bad, but in my opinion it is just not for the beginner, and it only covers grilling.
If you are looking for a compilation of of cooking with fire, I would advise you to look at one of Steven Raichlen's books like the "Barbecue Bible". He seems specialize in including
everything in his books. But, in my opinion, these books give you very little usable data other than a widely varied collection of recipes.
This doesn't mean his books are bad, but rather the recipe collections spark the thought process allowing you to come up with new ideas and you can modify the recipes to your liking. They make great reading material for the bathroom magazine rack.
