Wal-Mart for Dummies
While following up on Badger's idea of a Feminism for Dummies book, I happened to discover this: you can order Marx for Beginners from WalMart.com!
Here's Wal-Mart on Marx:
Marx for Beginners describes the origins and evolution of all those rabble-rousing notions about capital, labor, the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, class struggle, socialism--everything that went into making The Communist Manifesto one of the landmark publishing events of its time and the blueprint for a generation of social and political change.
What the blurb leaves out is that it's the nonfiction equivalent of a graphic novel by beloved Mexican cartoonist Rius. Like most of his work and the rest of the "for beginners" series he inspired, it's worth a read even if you disagree with his politics or his somewhat simplified and badly dated view of intellectual history. (Hmm -- looks like Pantheon cherry-picked the Marx, Darwin, Einstein and Freud titles from the series, originally published in English by Writers and Readers.)
Alas, Mao for Beginners is out of stock at Wal-Mart.