Who ya callin' "Dummy", pardner?

Lynn Sislo apparently hates the idea of the [topic] For Dummies books.

I think she's a bit off on this one. I own a number of Dummies books, on a number of different subjects, and generally I have found each one to be an excellent "Introductory" book about the topic in question. For instance, the HTML skills I have employed to rework a standard Blogger template into the current look come from The Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating a Web Page; I've learned a lot about wine from Wine for Dummies; Personal Finance for Dummies was a good starter book on various matters of money (although a year-and-a-half of unemployment rendered that knowledge useless, as we begin digging out of our "paycheck to paycheck" hole). Ditto Magic for Dummies, Management for Dummies, and even Poetry for Dummies.

Yes, these books are targeted toward people who are pretty starting from a "zero point" in those particular subjects, but this seems to me a good thing. Every Dummies book tries to give a fairly brief and readable account of "the basics" of any particular subject, and every one of them includes a lot of information as to where to go for continued explorations. They are most certainly not, in my experience, a kind of "Here's all you need to know about this, and now you don't have to bother doing any more than this, either" which is how Lynn seems to be viewing them. They're more the equivalent of a 101-level class in college. I don't see these books as "dumbing down" anything; rather, they serve as "Invitations" and "Introductions" to various topics.

Finally, in looking at the post and article Lynn links, I see that the Dummies books aren't specifically mentioned in the article -- what they are talking about, apparently, is some series of books that "rephrases" Shakespeare, translating him, for today's young kids. Now, I'm not sure that this is such a good idea (although I sometimes think Shakespeare is either taught too early or mistaught when it is), but this doesn't really represent the Dummies line of books, which are in no way equivalent to the kind of thing you'll find in, say, Cliff's Notes. A Shakespeare for Dummies might explain things like blank verse, iambic pentameter, the structure and nature of Elizabethan drama, and the like -- and it's a good thing to have that stuff explained if you're going to read Shakespeare.