MOV src, dest (or) MOV dest, src?

As already mentioned in the answer by Jerry Coffin, the Intel syntax fits better with the encoding of instructions for the x86 architecture. As a comment in my debugger's disassembler states, "the operands appear in the instruction in the same order as they appear in the disassembly output". For example, consider this instruction:

-a
1772:0100 test word [AA55], 1234
1772:0106
-u 100 l 1
1772:0100 F70655AA3412      test    word [AA55], 1234
-

As you can read in the opcode hexdump, the instruction opcode 0F7h is first, then the ModR/M byte 06h, then the little-endian offset word 0AA55h, and then finally the immediate word 1234h. The Intel syntax matches that order in the assembly source. In the AT&T syntax this would look like testw $0x1234, (0xAA55) which swaps the order compared to the encoding.

Another example that obeys the Intel syntax order is comparison conditions. For example, consider this sequence:

cmp ax, 26
jae .label

This will jump to .label if ax is above-or-equal-to 26 (in unsigned comparison). This mnemonic is only true of the cmp dest, src operand order, which sets flags as for dest -= src.

mov dest, src is called Intel syntax. (e.g. mov eax, 123)

mov src, dest is called AT&T syntax. (e.g. mov $123, %eax)

UNIX assemblers including the GNU assembler uses AT&T syntax, all other x86 assemblers I know of uses Intel syntax. You can read up on the differences on wikipedia.

Yes, as/gas use AT&T syntax that uses the order src,dest. MASM, TASM, NASM, etc. all use the order 'dest, src". As it happens, AT&T syntax doesn't fit very well with Intel processors, and (at least IMO) is a nearly unreadable mess. E.g. movzx comes out particularly bad.

There are two distinct types of assembly language syntax - Intel and AT&T syntax. You can find a comparison of both on Wikipedia's assembly language page.

Chances are your book uses the AT&T syntax, where the source operand comes before the destination.