If a friend came to you and said "I want to learn how to count cards..."

[Letangs]

I would say, "One book is insufficient.

I'm pretty sure any serious player would agree with you.
But hence why my question in the initial post, the dilemma is to recommend only one book The one you consider as the best material to introduce anyone to BJ cardcounting

I'm sure all of us would have different answers, as we perceived a book differently from one to another.

By the way, I'm pretty curious you didn't point out the KO count which combines a pretty good efficiency and the fact that it's rather "easy" to handle compared to Hi-Lo (no converting RC/TC which is basically what newcomers struggle with) in "Casino conditions" when you're not fairly well confident.

And to your last question, it might sound strange to you but... I'm not anywhere close to a "card counter". In fact, I've read tons of books (I guess about a dozen, Wong, Don, Lawrence, ...). Always been very interested in it, fascinated by this. I know most of it (theory), but I never really had the chance to really try it out on a regular basis.... Never had the time to train that hard, and I'm not living anywhere near a Casino, makes things harder.
Still, I'll enjoy growing my BJ knowledge on that forum.