Customer Reviews

Kaplan SAT Subject Test: U.S. History 2009-2010 Edition (Kaplan SAT Subject Tests: U.S. History)

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I am a high school student studying for the SAT US History Subject Test. I understand that any study guide for a test like this can't give much information about each event covered or it would be too long, but you would hope that the bare facts would be correct. Instead, the sloppiness in this study guide is astounding.

The mistakes certainly get worse as you progress through the book (I'm now near the very end), but there are factual errors as early as the description of Queen Elizabeth being crowned in 1588 (over 20 years off-- 1588 is the date of the Spanish Armada), and the chapter including Paul Revere, where it states his ride occurred on April 17th (actually, it was the 18th to the 19th).

Once you get into the Kennedy and Johnson years, the chapters themselves are disorganized-- lists of "Important People, Places, Events and Concepts" bolded beneath the chapter titles are often not to be found in the given chapters. The site of a KKK bombing that killed four school girls is given as the "13th Street Baptist Church" in the know-your-events list, and the "16th Street Baptist Church" inside the chapter. And at least one of the chapter quizzes gives you the wrong letter answer for one of the questions.

As a last example (although there are many other mistakes and typos), a description of the Greensboro lunch counter sit-ins reads, "In 1960, following student-led sit-ins against desegregated lunch counters... Ella Baker helped establish the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee" (implying the sitters were racists, I suppose).

Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether any other SAT US History study guide materials exists, but I highly recommend Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States", and although it won't "teach to the test," many of the same facts are there, and presented much more competently.

The Chapters are pretty brief but contain straight-to-the-point facts. At the end of the chapters (35 chapters) there is a 4 question quiz. The questions aren't too hard, I find them a bit more on the easy side. I didn't take the SAT yet so I'll have to update my review after my kaplan test and the actual SAT. So far, it's informative and a good guide.