Breaking out of the browser with air is an excellent book. It provides a great overview of a ton of things one can do with Air. The book is not a comprehensive bible of every single thing you need to know, but that's one of its strong points. If I need to know the complete in's and out's of something I'll check the api docs and get my info there. The best thing this book does is give you a full understanding of whats available.

Another key point for me is that the book is good at showing what kinds of things a developer should keep in mind when it comes to making desktop apps rather than web apps. This is bigger than you would think for impacting user experience.

I went into this book with as3 knowledge, having worked on an air app prior and some flex knowledge. Coming out I know alot more things to watch out for and a heads up some some functionality I haven't used. There's also a ton of good snippets of code; just enough, to give you an idea of whats being discussed.

As far as frameworks go they take a look at using some commands and talk a little about how that plays into creating reusable code, always a plus in my book. I'm more of a PureMVC fan myself, and the code they present is a variation of adobe's Cairngorm.

Various places they make comments to elements in the adobe flex 3 training from the source book. I'm off to get a copy of that now as a good in depth how it works book.

This is definitely worth picking up especially if you are new to Air. Not overpoweringly long either.