Thinking in C++ by Bruce Eckel is little hard for newcomers, it goes into advanced concepts. Like the poster above I would recommend C++ in 21 days. That book helped me a lot. For reference I recommend ''Microsoft''s visual c++ reference(on MSDN)'' failing that, the C++ standard($20 pdf) is little harder going. I have both but prefer MS reference. Don''t have stroutstrup''s book so can''t tell. However the STL excerpts from his book were very insightful to me. The C++ in 21 days can be found on IT websites like informit, etc. for free.

After you get the books I would try doing simple non-object non-function console type programs. It will be quite hard at first because of info overload. I mean what the heck is << or printf() Kinda hard to understand without going into static objects and functions. You might have to accept some concepts blindly at first. That will frustrate most people. Like in math where you''re doing these little theoretical concepts and it isn''t until much later that you get to put all this together to form something greater. Good luck