Midrashan Introduction (The Library of classical Judaism)

This book is not a "Dummies" guide to the Mishnah. The discussion reviews the Mishnah as literature, as theology, as sociology and as history. It is written at a collegiate level, and I think requires quite a bit of background in Torah study to really be beneficial. As a non-Jew, it was some tough sledding to grasp the understanding and the context of some of the texts, though someone more familiar with Rabbinic literature may find it overly simplistic. Neusner is an accomplished scholar, and his work reads like a scholarly text. Not a light read, but an informative one.