Re: master^ is not a local branch -- huh?!?

Johannes Schindelin [off-list ref] writes:

Just as a general hint, I think the best documentation about Git was 
written by J. Bruce Fields (the user manual) and Scott Chacon (everything 
that has GitHub written on it, and Git Pro, and much, much more).

The last one is "Pro Git": http://progit.org/book/; highly recommended.

... If you
happen to speak Japanese, Junio's book might help you understand the ideas 
behind the current Git user interface, too.

Nah, I don't talk about UIs.  I talk more about concepts.