I learned a ton from SAMS "teach yoursefl C++ in 21 days". Yeah I didn't think I would either, but it was given to me at work, and I went through about 75% of it and it was pretty damn good.
Agree 100%. We assume as programmers that because we learned something that is intellectually challenging, that means we have a license to explore other areas of science. Sometimes that works, but sometimes it simply doesn't.