Sean Liming wrote "Windows XP Embedded Advanced". I wrote "Windows XP
Embedded Step by Step".
The exercises in my book have you developing and deploying on one PC using
two partitions, so no additional hardware is required. It covers the usage
of the tools to build your XPe image. Unfortunately, it does not cover SP1
features, such as DUA and WinPE. It was designed to get developers with
little or no experience in XPe up to speed quickly.
Sean's book has more pages and does cover SP1 features. It has information
and exercises covering the basics as well as topics outside of the basics.
Some of the exercises are designed to make use of a separate target system.
Both are very good books.