Well, I am trying to learn the windows api but I have only found one tutorial that is worth reading which is "the forger's win32 API". I am using c++ and hope to get a book on it but I don't want to waste money on a less than mediocre book. Any recommendations?

I don't know of any books, but I know of some tutorials. Go and check out the Win32 API tutorials at GameTutorials.com. After only reading 2/3rd's tutorials I was able to make a nice Breakout clone. Some DirectX books have some Win32 API in the first few chapters, or in the appendix.

And not much of a tutorial is required. When I started the Windows API it was with the book "Programming Windows 98 from the Ground Up" by Herbert Schildt. The only parts needed were chapters 1 and 2 which showed the skeleton application and explained those core concepts (Device Context, Window, Registering a Window Class, Creating a Windows, the WndProc, ...) Once this code was entered, and these basic concepts partially understood all that is needed is to browse around for sub areas of the API (GDI, Printing, File, Memory-mapped IO, Devices, ... ...) experimenting with functions that interest you.

At its core all a windows app consists of is an entry point which registers a windows class, creates and instance, and runs a message loop .... when you register the window class you give it the function you want it to use as the WndProc, which gets called each time the message loop handles a message. So a simple windows app consists of 2 main functions "main" and "WndProc" ... and main doesn't really get any more complicated except to add startup and shutdown code ... all the additions to make the program better and better are just adding more code and handlers to the WndProc ...

Good Luck.