Customer Reviews

Cracking the AP U.S. History 1998-99 Edition (Cracking the Ap Us History Exam)

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4 star:		(4)
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This book is concise, and to the point. It covers all relevent material on the AP test, and is easy to study from. Friends who studied far in advance were dissapointed by the book's lack of depth - but that is exactly what makes this book so good for cramming. Nonetheless, this book is still adequate for people aiming for 5's on the exam. What such people must keep in mind is that every sentence in the book is important. Coming out of the test, it seemed to have covered all information on the 1998 exam.

I took the AP United States History test last year and I used the Princeton Review book to help me study. They give you good tips and they give you a good review of the many elements of U.S history. They also give you a sample test and explanations for the answers. I wish they included more than one sample test though. This book was really helpful and I earned a 4 on my AP test. This book is worth buying and studying from.

I consider the Princeton Review series to be the best in guides for AP's. They always focus on how to take the test, and include a practice test. However, I found for US History that a longer more extensive review of the material would have been beneficial. Given that, I'd say that this is the bast guide out there, but it's definitely not perfect.

I guess "Excellent, but not enough" is pretty harsh on a review guide, which is NOT a substitue for a textbook. Still, I give this 5 stars, along with a warning: use your textbook along with it.

The book is, overall, strong--it has good, detailed strategies, and a very good review section (in paragraph form, which helps link key terms that are in bold, which makes for an efficient review). A good strategy when using this book is to define the bold terms in the book and link them with a certain idea, for example, "Several factors led to the American Revolution," and then go into detail and support the claim using key terms.

Its weakness is that it hides some very important information. This is a question from an actual AP US History Exam: "Analyze the impact of the American Revolution on both slavery and the status of women in the period from 1775 to 1800." This is what The Princton Review has to offer:
"Second-class citizens and noncitizens--namely, women and blacks--had made sacrifices in the fight for liberation, and some expeted at least a degree of compensation. Abigail Adams wrote a famous letter to her husband pleading the case for women's rights in the new government, which John Adams answered in a derisive tone....The number of free blacks in the colonies grew during and after the war, but their increased presence among free whites was also accompanied by a growth of racist publications and legislation. Such conditions led to the early "ghettoization" of blacks...."
Now, this is not enough to write a good, concrete essay.

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Again, this is a test prep book.