I have Radical Brewing in my shopping basket for the past week, since I saw Freedgull mention it.
Designing Great Beers is very good. When I got it first I was a little irritated by the way it seemed to be geared towards American brewers entering competitions, but in fact, the potted histories he gives of different beer types, and comparisons of competition-winning home brews to commercial examples in terms of ingredients is really interesting, and the general way ingredients are introduced in the first part of the book all adds up to a great reference that you can learn alot from it.
As far as recipes to learn from, nimbus and I started out with Clone Brews. We only actually made one recipe exactly as it was in the book (maybe two?), but as beginners we found it a great way to learn about what different ingredients go into something approximating commercial beers we liked. So when we looked up a beer we liked and saw how these guys made it, and compared it to another recipe, we could mix and match and come up with our own recipes. Not the most instructive book, but I liked it from a kick-start point of view.
