There are very few generally useful books about system administration. DNS and BIND just happens to cover a subject that touches everything we do on the Internet; and covers topics that are often poorly understood, and difficult for most folks to get right through intuition and dumb luck. It doesn't hurt that BIND is damned near universal in usage, so odds are extremely high it's the DNS server you use.

The Frisch book is probably a great start for general concepts, though:

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-System-Administration-Third-...

It's been ten or more years since I've read it, but it's been updated every few years, and is probably due for a new edition any day now actually. The concepts it covers (backups with standard UNIX tools, for example) are somewhat timeless. It's probably not required reading, though, if you don't actually want to be a system administrator.

Most books are just re-hashes of the documentation for a particular service, like Apache or Postfix or Sendmail or whatever, so I don't really have any strong opinions in that direction. When I had problems with Sendmail in the distant past, I found the O'Reilly book useful, but I've never needed third party docs for Postfix, which I've been using for the past eight years or so. Books about specific software are also often quickly dated by new versions of the software.

So, that's a long-winded way of saying, "Not really."

I like the Evi Nemeth book for admin:

http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-System-Administration-Handbook-3r...

I'm amazed nobody has mentioned the "Practice of System and Network Administration" book by Limoncelli and Hogan.

Highly recommended.

http://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration...

DNS and Bind (now in its 3rd edition) by Liu, Albitz, and Loukides. It's an O'Reilly book.

http://www.amazon.com/DNS-BIND-Cricket-Liu/dp/1565925122

Amazon shows it's actually in its 5th edition now:

http://www.amazon.com/DNS-BIND-5th-Cricket-Liu/dp/0596100574

Good call :) Too late to edit :(