NHibernate has been the ORM (Object Relational Mapper) of choice on practically all projects I have been involved in over the last couple of years and I have nothing but positive things to say about my personal experience with NHibernate.  That being said, I do remember back in 2007 when I was faced with the task of evaluating NHibernate as a replacement for a brittle hand coded DAL (Data Access Layer) that there was scarcely any documentation or books for –true- beginner's.  Obviously, the landscape has changed a bit since,  there is a lot of documentation out there in the form of blogs and books that will guide you in the task of using NHibernate to its fullest potential but it is still very hard to find a good beginner’s guide.

“NHibernate 3 Begginers Guide” fills the need for a thorough beginner’s guide for NHibernate.    The material is well presented and organized, and as with most books that are published by PACKT (http://www.packtpub.com/) the material is code and example driven which in my opinion fits best the way most developers learn these day’s. 

A hidden gem in this book is Chapter 7 which provides a general introduction on how to monitor, test and profile you data access strategy.  NHibernate’s design for testability is in my opinoin the key feature that sets it apart from other ORM’s in the .NET space.

Conclusion

I would recommend this book for those learning NHibernate or thinking about choosing NHibernate for their data access technology as it answers most of the questions that you might have before getting up and running and building solid applications.  As a bonus, the book also touches on some more advanced topics like what mapping strategy should I use and how to develop and implement a testing strategy for my data access code.

Book: http://www.packtpub.com/nhibernate-3-beginners-guide/book