garym: Erik Naggum recently wrote about the "by dummies" thing on comp.lang.lisp. Here's an excerpt:

Never have I seen a book published by a novice for novices, nor heard of such a thing, but that does not mean it does not exist -- the likelihood that I would purchase it or read it is zero, as it would undoubtedly have an off-putting title and cover, probably including the target audience "dummies" or "the complete idiot". I recently reviewed a book in which the author could only be understood to apologize for his lack of mastery of the subject when he chatted endlessly about how hard it was to linearize the material and where he used more promises of what was to come and repetitions of what he had discussed than actual new information in each paragraph, how this and that feature in the topic he discussed "is not easy" to use and understand. It was torture to read and try to lift it to some readable level.