Well, the 2nd edition has a huge section about RMagick. That right there
is worth the price
The Ruby Way certainly covers a lot of material, and is a formidable tome.
On the other hand, and I've hesitated about saying this for some time
because I respect Hal's accomplishment and the effort, it's riddled
with lots of mostly small errors. There's a small official list of
errata, but it hasn't been kept up. I'd sent Hal quite a few and he
said that he had gotten quite a few more and intended to update the
errata, but doesn't seem to have gotten around to it. The new book
"The Rails Way" in the same series, seems to have fewer errors and
Obie is keeping a fairly active errata list using lighthouse for use
in preparing new printings.
I found that the Rails Way was good to read once, as a way to come up
to speed on the breadth of the Ruby scene at least as it was in early
2007 when the 2nd edition was published, and I've no doubt that it's
still valuable in that way. But I've found resources like following
and contributing to mailing lists like this, google, blogs, and
reading code to be the most valuable ways to keep up with Ruby.
It's very hard for printed books to keep up with technologies like
Ruby these days, they tend to be obsolete almost as soon as they are
published.
--=20
Rick DeNatale
My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/