My name is Raymond St. Paul I am new to Blender 2.53 Beta version of the software does anyone know...

My name is Raymond St. Paul I am new to Blender 2.53 Beta version of the software does anyone know where I can get a printed manual on how to use this software becoming extremely frustrated! I know there are tutorials out there yet most are of videos that assume the viewer already knows the basics of the software or often refer to the older versions which doesn't help me since they are not even the same software anymore totally different and based on what I've seen it was as total mess which version 2.53 was supposed to fix! Anyone know also how I can download a model from the net and use it in Blender? Also background images? My email is nospam@gmail.com and my address is nospam please let me know soonest becoming extremely frustrated!