I think I have an older edition of that book, and it doesn't cover recursion. I would not recommend it for a novice programmer, other than picking up basic syntax, since it doesn't give anything substantial to sink your teeth into.

The last C++ text that I came across was "C++ In Action: Industrial Strength Programming" by Bartosz Milewski. It was first published over a dozen years ago, so it will have dated a bit. In the first chapter the author explains objects using the usual taxonomist analogy, but also explains it in terms of the concept of scope. That first chapter alone gave me more insight than most of the SAMS text.

I don't think that recursion is really idiomatic in C++.

> I don't think that recursion is really idiomatic in C++.

Ok, I think you could throw that at C as well. As a general programming concept it's quite idiomatic. All I know is that fucking up recursion is just as easy as fucking up iteration.

Well it's not really idiomatic in C either. And it's not about fucking it up but about performance. Even if you do tail recursion, it will still be slower.