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Well, what kind of book has a collection of recipes? A cookbook, right? :-)

I haven't used any edition of the Python cookbook, but I've used the Perl cookbook and it's just like you described. I have also heard and read that the O'Reilly cookbooks are known (famous even?) for being the kind of books that you described.

Martelli's Python in a nutshell is the best I have seen on python. Not a cookbook, more of a reference, but this guy is extremely precise and rereading is always deepening my understanding of python.

Unfortunately, the most recent edition only covers 2.4 & the at-the-time proposed 2.5.

The best equivalent now is the language reference at python.org.

Yes, absolutely. There are a multitude of hidden gems in this book.