Review: Good idea...
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 01 5, 2012
Poorly executed. As other reviewers have mentioned, the chapters included in this collection are not "stand alone," and often have the unintended result of confusing the reader to the point of irritation. Since most people associate the "For Dummies" books with learning about a subject from start to finish (more or less) the use of seemingly random chapters from a number of their popular books does not impart any significant amount of useable information. This frustrates fans of the series and turns off potential readers, who assume that the regular length books are just as incoherent.I can understand the premise- to give the audience a sampling of their most popular books and entice them to buy the entire books. However, many of the chapters included were lost and floundered without the context of the entire book from which they were excerpted. A better approach may have been to condense a few books into mini-guides instead of excerpting. Alas, what's done is done, and the sole mitigating factor is the price of the collection- in this case, free.