Chapter 2, Deploying First Server, was not only about installing Terraform, but it also taught a bit about AWS basics. If you want to use Terraform with AWS only, then you first need to know AWS, of course. AWS has very detailed documentation and a lot of examples in it--it's a best place to start learning it. There are also probably hundreds of books about it. For a beginner, something like Learning AWS by Aurobindo Sarkar and Amit Shah will fit best.

It's easy to install official version of Terraform. Sometimes, though, you want to use the edge version, not yet released. The Terraform README has a good explanation of how to compile it: https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform#developing-terraform. What is important to know is that it is totally fine to use edge version of Terraform. Trust me, many big organizations do it, simply because they need some new features already now, and they can't wait for an extra couple of months till the official release. Compile the binary, upload it to internal artifact repository (could be just an S3 bucket) and use your own. Just try not to get stuck with a self-compiled version for too long.