These books are the best you can buy and give you recipes, examples and enough instruction to get the beginner going and to make the master better. These books give you the knowledge and skills you need to make real barbecue on a real smoker whether it is gas, charcoal, electric or anything else. These books also explore the world of real barbecue through Q joints and competitions.
1. Smokestack Lightning: Adventures In The Heart Of Barbecue Country
Ten Speed Press
This book has become a legend in barbecue not because of its loads of great recipes (which it doesn't have) or its careful, step by step instruction (which is also doesn't have), but because it so perfectly captures the culture and history of true Southern Barbecue. This book will give you not just a taste of real barbecue but enough knowledge to not only make your own great, low and slow, traditional barbecue. If you are serious about barbecue, you already own this book. 
2. Peace, Love, & Barbecue : Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies
St Martins Press
Mike Mills is a legend in barbecue. He is the only man to win Grand Master and the Memphis in May barbecue competition. This book is as much a biography of this, as told by himself and hit daughter, as it is a cookbook. The recipes are great, but the story telling is better. This book will give you the recipes that won the Memphis in May competition and launched seven restaurants from New York to Las Vegas.
3. Smoke & Spice: Cooking with Smoke, the Real Way to Barbecue
Harvard Common Pr
This is The Book. When the Jamison's put this book together they created the real Bible of Barbecue, the one book most even modern barbecue cook starts with (and keeps going with). This is a great cookbook that puts barbecue in the hands of real people with hundreds of fantastic recipes for pretty much everything you can put in a smoker. If you want to learn to cook barbecue, this is the book to start with.
4. Paul Kirk's Championship Barbecue: Barbecue Your Way to Greatness
Harvard Common Pr
Paul Kirk is the kind of chef that can think up a recipe and then win a competition without having tested it. This book is a great resource for anyone serious about barbecue. The systematic approach to rubs, mops, sauces and marinades give any serious smoker the tools they need to make great barbecue because this book starts with the basics and builds its way up. Kirk understands that any one barbecue dish is actually a combination of recipes that make one thing.
5. John Willingham's World Champion Bar-B-q : Over 150 Recipes And Tall Tales
Harpercollins
John Willingham takes his years of experience on the competition circuit and puts it all into this book. What you find here is 150 good recipes, the tips that make them better and the stories that make them great. Willingham is a legend of barbecue just like this book. Willingham encourages authenticity from making your own smoker to making sauces from scratch, and I mean scratch.
6. The Great Barbecue Companion: Mops, Sops, Sauces, and Rubs
Bruce Bjorkman also known as Mr. Barbecue takes his years of experience and puts together the Bible of barbecue sauces. Bjorkman knows that a barbecue sauce isn't something that comes from a bottle and isn't something slathered all over everything. Real barbecue sauces are used over hours from start to finish in any real barbecue experience. This book gives you not only tons of great recipes but the understanding and skills you need to venture out on your own.7. Where There's Smoke, There's Flavor : Real Barbecue
This book is different from the rest of the books on this list. This book takes barbecue to the masses by putting aside the traditions and the giant barbecue pits. Richard Langer shows the uninitiated how to use cheap smokers and gas and charcoal grills to make decent barbecue. While this book isn't serious on the tradition it is a great book for someone who knows nothing of real barbecue and wants to learn. This is a good book for the griller who has trouble lighting charcoal.8. The Kansas City Barbeque Society Cookbook: Barbeque
When people say that the Kansas City Barbeque Society (KCBS) wrote the book on barbecue, this is the book they mean. Subtitled, "Barbeque, it's not just for breakfast anymore" tells you that this book is serious about barbecue, but not much else. The KCBS is the group that organizes most of the championship competitions and trains most of the worlds barbecue judges.9. Dr. BBQ's Big-Time Barbecue Cookbook: A Real Barbecue Champion
Ray Lampe, better known as the Dr. BBQ has dedicated his life to preserving the traditions of barbecue and teaching is virtues to everyone who will listen and several who won't. This book not only gives you plenty of instruction and recipes but a good dose of opinion. This is a great book for anyone serious about barbecue, and I mean serious. To Dr. BBQ, barbecue isn't just a way of life, it is life.10. Barbecue America: A Pilgrimage in Search of America's Best Barbecue
Rick Browne isn't just serious about barbecue, he's a really nice guy. This book is as much based on his love of barbecue as his great talent to get some of barbecue's greats to give up their secrets. Barbecue America is as much cookbook as it is travel book. Just reading it will make you want to take the summer off and hit the road in search of the best barbecue in the world, just like Browne did. Once the travel agencies get their hands on this book, they'll be organizing tours.