Mbed seems like an interesting plataform for begginers, but the documentation is mostly reference for people that already know their stuff. No free or cheap introduction texts like in Arduino. I only found two books in the 50 euros price range.

Am I missing something? Can you point me to any free or cheap book for begginers?

This should be more than enough to get you started.

https://developer.mbed.org/handbook/Homepage

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNcxd73dSceKtU77XWMOg8A

That is a bunch of links to diferent information, not a coherent introductory text. See for example http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/ , or a book like this for less than 10 euros, https://books.google.es/books?id=f3xYRaq_4ZYC&dq=beginning+with+arduino&hl=es&source=gbs_book_similarbooks where the fundamentals are explained in a coherent manner so later people can use references like the Handbook and the Cookbook.

All that hardware stuff you can use also for mbed, thats the same. There are also some getting started pages, but thats really just how to download a new program. In general I guess there aren't (cheap) books like for Arduino (tbh I always have questioned the use of books like that, since they are generally outdated by the time they are published).

But hardware and C++ wise you can just follow any general book/tutorial.

Several books are listed here. The book by Bert van Dam now also has a Part 2. I agree with Erik that these books are quickly outdated because libraries have been updated and platforms have been added. The basic stuff will still be more or less OK.

I agree that those book get outdated as reference manual quickly, but it's not their purpose, they are made to help people understand the fundamentals and get the basis to take advantage of SDK and sources available.

this is a good beginners resource with easy examples:

http://wiki.micromint.com/index.php/Mbed_Book_Examples_on_Micromint_Bambino

Look out for the second edition of "Fast and Effective Embedded System Design: Applying the ARM mbed", it's now available (http://store.elsevier.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780081008805&pagename=search). It lets you start pretty much as a beginner, but aims to get you to an advanced stage. And we promise to keep code examples updated on the book web site!