well, maya has quite a good documentation too. and you can literally do anything with it. but the lord of the rings seems a a short magazine compared to this huge manual
I love the ammount of control maya gives you though. seperate control over faces, edges, whole curves, or vertexes, together with loads of different snap modes. that is really some nice programm. but by the time you are able to create simple objects, you will design complicated shapes with SketchUp...