using a teach-yourself approach, The Practical SQL Handbook is geared toward increasing the sophistication of intermediate database users involved in designing databases as well as accessing them day to day.
As someone two has learned a large number of programming, scripting, and formatting languages, I feel well-positioned to say that SQL is a challenging language to fully master. After finally figuring out that I wasn't going to be able to wing it anymore, I read some reviews and got this book. I finally learned the right way to build databases for use with SQL. In the last eight years, it has repeatedly come off the shelf to solve my problems.
I learned a lot about SQL from reading this book. It was a good reference back in 1994 when I bought it. I'm giving it only three stars now because it is so out of date - if it were the current edition I'd rate it higher.