When I went to college they started us off in C++ from day one. It's not a bad place to start IMHO if you want to be serious about programming. My advice, when you start writing your first newbie cin/cout newbie programs and start learning the syntax, take a look at the iostream library files. Try to see how those functions work and also look at the style the programmers use. Always make your code orderly and well documented. Trust me, it will make you a lot better later on. As for a first book, I can't really say as my instructor taught only from lecture and just gave us handouts of source code (the way it should be). Mabye some others might be able to help in that.
For God's sake, DO NOT GET "Learn C++ in 24 hours" or "C++ for Dummies" type books. They will ruin you forever. (I've seen it happen)
And always remember, no book can ever replace studying well written, well documented source code.
