The Dietel and Dietel "C: How to program" has been a standard for a long time.
The "X" in "Y" days series is usally pretty good, too (e.g. Perl in 21 days)

If you've never programming or scripted ever at all before, you may want to consider taking a class, too. Often times, local high schools or vocational schools will have "continuing ed" programs and may offer a programming class. If your local high school doesn't, then check your local community learning center, or your local community college.

Generally, in high schools, they still start students out w/ BASIC. In college, in EE / CE programs, they start students out w/ C, and in CS prorgams, it's usually either Java or C++.

Anything found here. O'Reilly have a very sound reputation for their programming books.

Try starting by learning php (Version 5) Because it is relatively easy to grasp the basics and then work up to something like C or C++.

Thanks,
Tony

LOL! :-) The best "programming" class I ever took in college was the formal logic course that was my philosophy requirement in engineering school. Everything else is just a matter of learning the syntax, good style, etc. As Adam suggested, it depends a lot on the language you want to learn first. In my case, I started out with Fortran in engineering school, took Wang Basic in continuing ed, taught myself dBase II/III/IV, SQL, C, C++, x86 assembler, Smalltalk, Java, various scripting languages, etc. At this point, any new programming is JAPL (Just Another Programming Language) - the principles remain the same, just the syntax and support API's change, which can be learned in a fairly short period of time.