Petzold is an excellent book for learning windows programming.The code in it is all straight c but that should be no problem for someone reasonable in c++. Try to learn the api first. The latest edition of petzold is a little weak in some areas but you will find that stuff is covered in the 4th edition.For some reason 2 chapters were dropped. Others here recommend a book by herbert schildt on windows programming but I have not read that. There is a book by david kruglinsky(close but might not be exact) about visual c++ that is quite good. Also after learning the api if you want to progress to MFC (microsofts c++ api wrapper classes) then the best book I have read on that is programming windows with mfc by jeff prosise.
