python book for non technical absolute beginner

[Terry Reedy]

News123 wrote:

> One of my 'non technical' friends complained about knowing nothing at
> all about programming (though using computers regularly for mails / web
> browsing / googling and downloading / cropping photos )
> 
> He wants to play a little with programming to stimulate parts of his
> otehrwise idle brain cells. ;-) Normally it's more the social science /
> linguistic parts being exercised,
> 
> I thought python might be a nice language for this
> 
> No my question does anybody know a nice beginners book (or a learning CD
> or on line tutorial)? Ideally it shouldn't be too serious and have a lot
> of small nice mini-examples
> 
> thanks in advance for any suggestions hints

I started with the 1.3 version of
http://docs.python.org/tutorial/index.html
(but had lots of previous experience).