Look into Kirk Byers free Python for network engineers class. It's like 8- weeks and is and intro to python but with a network automation twist and it will introduve you to Netmiko. The Eric Chou book is a little beyond beginners as he doesn't detail stuff really deep and assumes you know the basics. The second book is really good and they are coming out with a second edition soon.
Once you finish Kirk Byers 8- week class, look into Napalm and Nornir.
Napalm/Nornir/Netmiko are all vendor neutral and use SSH for connecting. The other way to do network automation is with Netconf/RESTCONF. Both depend on the capabilities of the network gear your trying to connect to.
An easier way to get into network automation is using Ansible.