I loved the 2005 book "Professional Java Development with the Spring Framework" by Johnson. What would be the 2008-9 equivalent of this in terms of the quality and clarity the book provided?
Essentially looking for a book for someone new to Spring, I still think the 2005 book is somewhat relevant, but much has changed in the Spring world since then.
The best of the bunch today seems to be the "Pro Spring" series, and the "Spring an Action" series. I can particularly recommend the former.
edit: It seems that Pro Spring covers Spring 2.5, but Spring in Action is still stuck back in the 2.0 days
I'm reading "Spring Recipes" right now (~1/3rd of the way done), and I can recommend it. Spring 3.0 isn't out yet, so it's right up to date covering 2.5.
UPDATE: Finished it this week. I can highly recommend it, just for the chapter on Spring Security alone.
Depending on your time scales, you may want to wait until Spring 3.0 is out (I believe it's imminent since 3.0 M3 is out). Looks like Apress has an appropriate book.