Infojunk

You will never find a definitive Emacs book. Emacs arcana are passed on from druid to druid in the dead of night, using much ritual and gnashing of teeth.

Were a definitive book on Emacs ever to be written, Emacs itself would disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre.

There are some that say this is where Emacs came from, when someone wrote the definitive Vi book.