Cheap A History of Western Society Complete (Book) (John P. McKay, Bennett D. Hill, John Buckler) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of A History of Western Society Complete

very helpful
One must simply remember that this book is actually the study guide to the textbook, not the textbook itself. I admit it; the textbook itself is quite lacking and dull. So much so that at times i simply cannot push myself to do the actual reading. That is where this books comes in hand. It provides a simple, easy to understand outline of each chapter. It also includes 25 sample multiple choice questions for each chapter with the correct answers and an expalantion on why each answer is correct or incorrect. I would recommend this study guide to anyone who has to go through the drone of actually using the textbook.

---

Yuck!
I am in an AP European history class right now, and this book is the textbook some genius has chosen for us to use. I have found that the entire thing is written in an extremely convoluted and confusing manner, to the point where after reading any given chapter I have had to either consult The Cliff's Euro History book or the online study guide to actually get the point. While reading the Cliffs book it also become evident to me that they have left out a fair number of important events and characters. All in all, I would not recommend this book to anyone looking to learn a straightforward history of Europe.

---

Look at the content, not the writing style
It's a good textbook and it's usually easy to make sense of the events, but on more than one occasion, the author assumes you remember some detail from a previous chapter where it wasn't stressed, and therefore dives right into a new explanation without first reminding the reader of this topic. I also find that McKay is somewhat unclear in his analysis of the causes of a particular event. He shifts around without ever establishing a main cause: something that can be very annoying when you see the question, "what was the main cause of..." on the test. In addition, the author has a great talent for dragging and extending his points long after he's finished explaining them, and then covering other equally important topics in two sentences. Well, I guess that's all concerning the style this book is written in. If you're reading this book to study for the AP exam, there's probably not that much wrong with it, if of course, you can focus solely on the factual parts.