This book is a straightforward, no-nonsense introduction to Scheme, and in its second edition brings the material up to date with respect to the ANSI standard. It covers the properties and features of Scheme; Scheme programming for the novice and advanced Scheme programmer; and Scheme's procedures and syntactic forms.
As its title indicates, The Scheme Programming Language is to the ANSI Scheme programming language what The C Programming Language is to ANSI C. I leaned on Dybvig's reference heavily when I implemented an ANSI Scheme interpreter as part of an intermediate programming course in C++. It was indispensable, clarifying language subtleties for me repeatedly. When I later implemented basic neural networks in Scheme for another course, I once again found The Scheme Programming Language a tremendous resource. Any changes to ANSI Scheme that may have occurred since 1997 notwithstanding, I highly recommend this book.