Beginning C++ Game Programming is, as it's title states, an introduction to C++ with examples in gaming context. This book assumes no previous programming experience, but requires one to read carefully, understand the samples, and to really prove that you've learned a concept, do the exercises! You'll learn all the basic capabilites of C++, then you'll learn about classes, inheritance and polymorphism, and you'll even get a taste of the STL (vector and string objects).Granted you won't be a C++ guru after reading this one book, but you will have enough information to be extremely useful, and to go ahead and learn APIs such as DirectX and OpenGL (in fact, game programmers typically don't use the more advanced features of C++ as they cause their programs to incur a performance hit), or even study software rasterization!So if you're a complete programming novice and you're driven to learn, then this is a great place to begin your C++ odyssey.