Before going further with this book, you will want to install the latest versions of PostgreSQL and PostGIS (9.3 and 2.1, respectively). You may also want to install pgAdmin (1.18), if you prefer a graphical SQL tool. For most computing environments (Windows, Linux, OSX), installers and packages include all of the required dependencies of PostGIS. The minimum required dependencies for PostGIS are PROJ.4, GEOS, libjson, and GDAL.
A basic understanding of the SQL language is required to understand and adapt the code found in this book's recipes.