You might try to pick up a copy of The Radio Amateur's Handbook, an older one from the 1980s or thereabouts. Handbooks of that era had projects in them that you could actually duplicate and get working as well as some good theory and practice stuff. The modern ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications (hey, what's in a name?) is geared more toward microcircuitry using high-density circuit boards and surface mount components, which are fine in and of themselves but don't really lend themselves to easy duplication especially for a newcomer to the "black arts" of radio equipment construction.