The PickAxe: Programming Ruby
Absolutely the Ruby book to get is Programming Ruby 1.9 & 2.0, The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide by Dave Thomas and others (from the Pragmatic Bookshelf).[1] Although I highly recommend picking up the fourth edition of this excellent book, which covers all of Ruby 1.9 and 2.0, you can also get an older (but still mostly relevant) version for free online.
You can find just about everything about Ruby, from the basic to the advanced, in this book. It’s easy to read, it’s comprehensive, and it’s just about perfect. I wish every language had a book of this quality. At the back of the book, you’ll find a huge section detailing every method in every class, explaining it and giving examples. (This is where you really ...