As far as books? I'd highly recommend "Deployment Fundamentals"
Deployment Fundamentals - Volume 1 Migrating to Windows 7 using MDT 2010 Lite Touch and WDS
Deployment Fundamentals - Volume 4 Deploying Windows 8 and Office 2013 Using MDT 2012 Update 1
DISM is in fact a very powerful tool, but you don't really need to learn the command line syntax of DISM to build, capture and deploy great images, because there are already scripts that will do it all for you, they're all part of MDT 2012. That's what I learned from Volume 1, instead of running DISM by hand, use MDT to build images from scratch every time, the automation creates for almost flawless standardization.
The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit provides an excellent GUI for working with the extensive plethora of command line tools included in both the WAIK for win7 and the ADK for win8.
While one COULD do most of the work needed to build images with DISM and the bare command line, that's not how the tools are designed to work.
The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit will automate the whole process for you: build, capture, and deploy, you don't need to learn the DISM command line, learn MDT 2012.
Since imageX is being phased out, DISM is now taking over almost all the image handling in ADK (which also works just fine with win7, infact even better in some regards).
Rather than going down the road of having to service offline images and slipstreaming offline updates with commandline DISM, build an "Image Factory" deployment share in MDT 2012 with the ADK.
As long as running windows updates is enabled in the task sequence, you can have it spit out completely automated images every six months, every six week, whenever.