The For Dummies series has been riding on its laurels a bit too long. Back in the days of MS-DOS and Windows 3.1, the Dummies series was innovative and really good. I guess the marketers decided to branch out and attempt to apply the same model to hundreds of other fields. The Dummies schtick is nothing but a comedy overlay to an existing academic model that is confusing to start with.
Latin For Dummies fails because they take the same ponderous academic teaching model and spin it with silly and trite text. They don't even try to get away from the grammarian's non-intuitive inside language of dative, declension, genitive, infinitive, conjugation, etc. Words that also must be mastered in order to slog through the same tired obfuscated academic approach to Latin that made our grandparents hate Latin when they were kids.
The For Dummies series fails in the same way with Calculus but, that's for another review! |
Latin for Dummies Books In Print, Audio Books.