A book by Paul White, from 2003. Gives a good introductory practically oriented overview of:
- the mixing console,
- patching and patchbays,
- equalizers,
- enhancers,
- compressors,
- limiters,
- gates and noise reduction,
- panning and positioning,
- digital delay effects,
- reverberation,
- multi-effects,
- MIDI (very briefly),
- software plug-in basics,
- production effects,
- and surround sound concepts.
Note that the emphasis is on effects and processing, so topics like microphones are NOT covered in that particular book (which is only part 1 of a series).
The target audience of the book is beginners and intermediates, but the reader is treated with full respect and at no point did I get a feeling of the content being dumbed down too much (obviously, the book doesn't cover every possible aspect of the topics, but this is fully understandable). It might even be that those readers who have no technical background might find the content not be the best match with their baseline and taste, but, correspondingly, the more enjoyable it is to the technically inclined audience. I definitely found the book to be very educative for me.
More info at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1860744567