SQL subqueries newbie help

Hi All,

I need a little help regarding writing some subqueries. For example I
have a table "items" which contains columns: itemid, description; and
another table "events" with columns: itemid, date, event. events.itemid
references items.itemid. Table events contains events regarding some
itemid's from table items, so there could be multiple events regarding
one item from items table. for example:

Table: items
itemid description
1 Lamp
2 Desk
3 HiFi

Table: events
itemid event date
1 purchase 2003-01-01
1 repair 2003-01-03
1 repair 2003-02-05
2 purchase 2003-02-01
3 HiFi 2003-02-01

I'd like to write a query which returns following information regarding
each item: item, date of very first event, very last event.
Is this possible? I think I can write several SELECT queries and
procces them by an application or possibly write some procedure, but
what is better solution?

PS: are there any books regarding complex SQL queries in electronic
format?