Topic: Great Guide to Microphone Selection and Use
Sound on Sound magazine is published in the UK and is targeted at serious amateur and professional recording and production folks. As part of their promotional efforts, they occasionally publish free booklets and guides about various aspects of recording.
They have recently come out with a publication called "Microphones: Products & Practice" and it is utterly fantastic. Like any commercial magazine, they promote their advertisers heavily, but that's OK as their advertisers are all the folks you want to buy from, anyway. The guide covers in good detail the different kinds of microphones available, how you might use them, different recording techniques, and what kinds of audio sources are better recorded with what kinds of mics. It also covers how to understand microphone performance; i.e. how to read a polar pattern or response chart.
And if you like microphones as art (I think they're beautiful) there's a whole lot of pictures. 
In order to get the guide, they want your email address, but you can opt out of hearing from them if you want. Personally, IMO, if you are reading this section of the forum, you probably want to be reading Sound on Sound anyway. It's one of the few places on the internet that I actively allow through my spam filter. They're really good.
Anyway, here's the link to get you to the buyer's guide.
http://www.soundonsound.com/smartguides … s/mcbg.php
And here is the SoS website in whole.
Enjoy!
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