I am reading the 1st Edition of this book right now so far it is great!

I'm actually working on a review of it now.  This is a great book for getting the bases down for understanding how exploits work and how to write them.  This is sort of the primer for understanding many of the most common exploits out there today.  It is heavily unix centric, but in my opinion that makes it easier to understand.  I didn't find the examples horribly useful though, and I actually tested what I learned over at http://www.smashthestack.org/ and referenced back at this book at shellcoders handbook on a regular basis as I went through the excercises.