In one of the first "Idiot's Guide" books I saw, the author's introduction explained that the author was the "idiot," with the premise that "If I can can understand it, you can understand it." I've never looked at enough of them to know whether that was a "publishers premise" for the series, or if the one I saw was an exception.

The later books of the ilk were obviously intended to cater to the apparently popular notion that "real people can't understand that stuff" so it has to be "dumbed down." It is somewhat worrisome that this "sales approach" worked so well in the beginning; but I think that by now it's just a "trademark" that people have learned to recognize and associate with books that are (usually) fairly well written. It does, at least to some extent, tell you what the "target audience" is, so that you can decide more readily whether it's at the "right level" for your use.

Good writing, and especially good technical writing, is incredibly difficult; but there are no dummy readers. If a book fails to get its message across, it is the AUTHOR's fault - because he failed to identify a target audience and stick to what that audience needs in order to learn something, or (most often) because he just can't write, and should do something else more useful.

Unfortunately, there are too few good (esp. technical) authors to satisfy the publishers' gr(n)eed to get information to market, so a lot of poorly qualified people get their names on books.

John