While I'm sure there is no one perfect book on the topic for everyone, I think I have finally found the CSS guide that's juuust right for me.

It's called Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content from Presentation (by Owens Briggs, Steven Champeon, Eric Costello, Matt Peterson et al., a Friends of Ed/Glasshaus book). It starts where it should, at the very beginning, explaining exactly how and why various web layout and styles standards developed, and the authors have a rather common-sense logical argument - if designers today use and adopt CSS techniques properly, there will be far less cobbling, kludging and problematic code deprecation as future web standards evolve.

If you don't wish to read about CSS origins and theory, simply skip ahead for easy-to-follow (but technically detailed) explanations of how to use Cascading Style Sheets, as well as numerous examples of eye-catching creatively adapted CSS pages complete with code and functional details. However, this is much more than a color-by-numbers guide to CSS. Briggs and company have assembled a talented crew of co-authors and contributors who've made this book invaluable to users of varying expertise levels, from personal users customizing pre-assembled blog templates and web pages to commercial site developers. It's farkleberries recommended.

Plus, Glasshaus has another book that looks really useful: Web Graphics for Non Designers.

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