DNS for a LAN

Hi.
I am new to DNS, and its usage…What I would like to do for educations sake is to use DNS on my small LAN. I have a couple of books on setting it up…maybe I will get that sybex book, by craig hunt on DNS. What do you think.
I am just looking for suggestions on Books , and practical advice for a small lan…using DNS, NFS, NIS,Samba,apache and so forth
thanks………..PaT