I learned to build 16-bit Windows apps with an 8088 and a copy of Petzold's "Programming Windows". I remember thinking that I would never learn the Windows API -- back then there were at least 300 or so method calls. I bought my first mouse, a hard drive (I was the first person I knew with a harddrive -- it was 5 megabytes of glorious luxury.)

As time went on, both Petzold and Microsoft reelased updates, and frankly Petzold stopped being my refeerence of choice. But his new WPF book is the best thing I've read in years, and is easily the best introduction to writing WPF applications.

Go. Buy it now:

http://www.amazon.com/Applications-Code-Markup-Presentation-Foundation/dp/0735619573