Best introduction to Marx & Engels?

[fa2991]

I was at a used book store the other day and came across this book:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/186722.Essential_Thinkers

http://www.amazon.com/COMMUNIST-MANIFESTO-CAPITAL-SELECTIONS-SOCIALISM/dp/0760762678/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1286838628&sr=8-1

It's (faux) gold-gilded, has a ribbon bookmark, and is literally pocket sized. Check out what's in it:

The Communist Manifesto
Wages, Price, and Profit
Capital (excerpts)
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

It immediately hit me that this little book was probably the best book I could think of to give some one if they asked for an intro to Marxism.

What do you think? Any other books that you think can top that quality and selection at that price? Or is this the definitive intro. to Marx & Engels' works?

[x359594]

If you're talking about straight from the pen of Marx and Engels I don't think it can be beat for the price and content.

[praxis1966]

Actually, I think The Portable Karl Marx (http://www.amazon.com/Portable-Karl-Marx-Library/dp/014015096X) may be even better. It's got everything you mentioned, plus a bunch of letters he wrote, to everybody from Engels to his sister, excerpts from The German Ideology, Theses on Fuerbach, and The Civil War in France. It's even got stuff from his doctoral thesis, his journalistic works, report cards from when he was at the University of Bonn, not to mention it even has his damned birth certificate in it, lol. Pretty damned good if you ask me.

[fa2991]

I've seen that at Barnes & Noble. Seems too long for just a quick intro, though.