Social Media book for absolute beginners

From time to time, people ask me where to find a good absolute beginner’s guide to social media and social networking. As you might be able to imagine, those aren’t books I read, so it’s somewhat difficult for me to find one I can really recommend.

Recently Jerry Pournelle, a famous sci-fi author, wrote a succinct review about The Social Media Marketing Book (affiliate link warning), by Dan Zarrella. Although Pournelle’s review here (scroll down a bit after clicking) is fairly succinct, here’s his comment on who this book is good for:

That should give you an idea of who this book is meant for: people who want to promote products by using the new social media like Facebook and Twitter, but who don’t know the game: either because they’re just getting started, or they are old fogeys who haven’t kept up with the enormous explosions on the Internet. Incidentally, you may count me in the latter group.

Sounds like it’s probably good if you haven’t used social media at all and really need a primer.