Complete Beginner Guide to Arduino
If you’re interested, conceptually, in hacking together your own electronics (to participate in potentially one of the most rewarding sectors of the economy), here’s a book (PDF) to get you going. Kudos to Mike McRoberts.
The booklet has been written presuming that you have no prior knowledge of electronics, the Arduino hardware, software environment or of computer programming. At no time will we get too deep into electronics or programming in C. There are many other resources available for free that will enable you to learn a lot more about this subject if you wish to go further.
The best possible way to learn the Arduino, after using this kit of course, is to join the Arduino Forum on the Arduino website and to check out the code and hardware examples in the ?Playground? section of the Arduino website too.


[...] to China is nothing new. Shlok Vaidya likes it except for the emphasis on China, and has further reading for you. John Robb loves it, of course (and is even more concerned with the business [...]