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Xena Donovan
The Complete Idiot's Guides ("The Idiot's Guide to ..." series) is a product line of how-to and other reference books published by Dorling Kindersley (DK). The books in this series provide a basic understanding of a complex and popular topics. The term "idiot" is used as hyperbole, to reassure readers that the guides will be basic and comprehensible, even if the topics seem intimidating. The approach relies on explaining a topic step-by-step, using basic terminology, definitions of words, and profiles of people.
Alpha Books, publisher of the Complete Idiot's Guides, is a member of Penguin Group. It began as a division of Macmillan. Pearson Education acquired Macmillan General Reference (MGR) from Simon & Schuster in 1998 and retained the line while the rest of MGR was sold to IDG Books.[1] Alpha moved from Pearson Education to Penguin Group in 2003. Alpha became part of sister company DK in 2012.[2]
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A couple of years ago I read a story about an eight-year old who "borrowed" his parent's car one evening and drove (safely!) to McDonald's to get a burger. It turns out he had the munchies that evening and taught himself how to drive in ten minutes on YouTube.
As a parent, this was terrifying to read, but I also wrote at the time about how it was a perfect example of a trend that I was calling Light-Speed Learning - the idea that our expectation today, reinforced by easy access to how-to content online, is that we can all teach ourselves to do anything faster. Fundamental to this belief is that people today largely have faith in their own ability and intelligence to be able to learn in this way.
Two decades ago we were in the midst of "loserdom." Slacker culture was strong and songs like Beck's "Loser" defined a generation. This was the time that the ubiquitous For Dummies and For Idiots series of guide books were first launched. This underachiever mentality dominated the minds of Generation X, until this cohort of "teenage dirtbags" grew up and had kids. They went through their own mid-life crisis of sorts and came out the other end to define the world that Millennials and Generation Z are inhabiting now.
As we are just a few months away from the next decade, this has changed dramatically. People no longer embrace their own limitations the way we once did. Two decades ago we might have willingly called ourselves Dummies and Idiots, but that's not who we are today. The problem is, most guidebooks on topics we want to learn are still written for that mentality. Dummies and Idiots guides are filled with quantified bullshit and useless definitions.
So-called "bible-style" guidebooks are even worse, promising 700+ pages on a business topic but lacking any real actionable advice. For example, one such guide includes the following definition (taken verbatim):
But some of you are thinking ... don't we want a guide to be basic? Isn't it a good thing, as some fans of the Dummies guides point out, that a guide doesn't assume we know anything about a topic? There is a difference between keeping things simple and dumbing them down. Just because you don't know the intricacies of email marketing or social media doesn't make you an idiot who needs to have the word "friend" defined for them.
If the dummies, idiots and bible guides are too bloated, then maybe we should just follow the lead of that eight-year old burger-lover and seek out our advice through YouTube and blog posts. Both are great, but unfortunately they are time-consuming to find and quickly become dated. They lack curation and there isn't a single cohesive point of view. The end result is akin to building your own house by finding your own architect, plumber, contractor, electrician, landscaper and roofer. You can do it, but it ends up being a lot more effort.
As an author, I have wondered what would it take to create a useful, actionable, opinionated, relevant, not-quickly-outdated guide to a business topic? And not just one topic but dozens. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. That's a question I've been leading a team to answer for the past 16 months.
In that time we have been laying the foundation for a new type of guide book. We have assembled an amazing team of editors, designers and publishing professionals. We've tested template designs and spoken to educators and learning consultants. We have worked with multiple design studios to create an engaging and friendly template. And lastly (but most importantly) we have recruited some unbelievable experts to write the first several books in a new series we called the Non-Obvious Guides.
The series has a simple mission: to bring you real advice from real experts. They are written for smart people - not dummies or idiots. And the tone of each one is intentionally meant to be "like having coffee with an expert." When thinking about who we were writing for, we described our ideal readers as "Time-Starved Doers":
Our goal with these books is to offer the next best thing to that experience. I'm beyond thrilled to share that we have now launched the first five of these books. They are available online and in fine bookstores across the US, as well as distributed internationally with several translated versions in multiple languages already in progress too!
One of the things we have spent a lot of time working on is the interior for these guides to make them visual, easy to read and filled with templates and guides to help you get stuff done. Here's a couple of examples of the interior spreads from my contribution to the series - the Non-Obvious Guide To Small Business Marketing:
In the coming months, we have many more guides coming on topics including Blockchain, Effective Presentations, Customer Service, Leading Technical People, Doodling, Statistical Literacy, Sales and many other important themes. I'm so excited by the series but even more by the authors that have come on board and their consistent willingness to share their deep expertise in such a generous and accessible way.
None of us want to live in a world (or work at a company) that is led by dummies and idiots. Most of us don't want to be treated that way either. We already have access to the information of the world online and the opportunity to get smarter faster on just about any topic is readily available. You don't have to be a dummy or an idiot any more.
I'm currently reading Winning Chess Openings by Yasser Seirawan, but I'm having a hard time understanding it. So I was wondering, should I read, for example, Winning Chess Tactics before Winning Chess Openings? Or some other book so I can better understant the openings? This leads me to another question. Wich is, in your opinion, the correct reading sequence of Seirawan's Winning Series? I have already read the Play Winning Chess book.
I read many of his books and I liked them. but to me (and I've said this a few times in other forums) by far the best book for anyone rated approximately 1300 or UNDER is "the idiots guide to chess" by patrick wolff. his writing style is superb, he explains things in an extremely clear style. this book is appropriate for those who have never played a game OR for those who want to improve many aspects of their game. it is not only for the pure beginner. but anyone over 1300 or so probably would get little out of it and anyone over about 1400 almost certainly will already know the material.
The best way to study chess is to first try to memorize all variations in Alekhine's defense, like I did, and than move to Catalan and than to Grunfeld Indian. You'll get to 2000+ in no time...and remember, don't mention this to anyone, it's the secret formula
I'm in the middle of his ending book and his opening book. After I finish them will it really be nessesary to read his tactic, stratigy, combo book's? Right now I'm going through a book called "Complete Chess Workout" or something like that. It's straight up puzzles, with solutions at the end of the book with sucinct explination and various lines (at the end of the book.) I'v noticed Improvement. Do you think Yesser Sierwan's book on tacktics would still be useful?
Good call. Any recomendations on other books after I finish his series? Also just to reiterate the original posters question what order should I read them in? I'm already a good ways through both winning endgames and winning openings. I believe there are three or four other books Stratigy, Tactics, and Brilliancies? Again are all these books nessesary? (I know you recomended the Tactics book.) I'm not quite sure what the Brilliancies book is about. Another question is: what book would mating pattern recognition (i.e. anastasia's mate, llegal's mate) fall into? Tactics?
ouch, I'm getting an enjoyable read out of it. First chess book I've spent more then 5 minutes looking at. It's nice to get some formalization on ideas I trusted my instincts on...pretty sure it's being useful to me :)
I am rated arround 17-1800. I am 3/4 through Wolff's "complete Idiots Guide to Chess". I have found it an easy read (great language and way of explaining things) and very usefull covering many areas of chess.
My experience going through them so far is that play winning chess is an excellent primer for people starting out. Winning chess tactics isn't that great a tactics book and should probably get another. Winning chess strategy is excellent. Winning chess endings is also very good, but can probably use Silman's endgame course if you prefer.
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