I strongly suggest Learn to Program by Chris Pine. http://pragprog.com/book/ltp2/learn-to-program

I saw a non-technical friend go through it in the course of about a month last year. Though the book doesn't teach in Python, it does teach general programming concepts and my buddy is currently doing a lot of Python coding as a grad student. In fact he credits his programming skills as a giving him a huge edge in his research job.

The author did an excellent job of making even basic exercises in the earliest chapters as engaging as they reasonably could be.