The amount of detail that this book provides is awesome. It is as thick as a textbook, with lots of pictures for those of us who have forgotten most of our college education. But seriously, the amount of detail provided for each method of joinery is unmatched. There isn't another book I would rather have on this subject. I hope the publishers keep adding to this series!

As an intermediate woodworker, I often need to review a procedure before undertaking it. I have found Mr. Rogowski's book to be an excellent reference to use at the bench. It explains techniques in two ways, text and visual. You can read about the procedure and clarify particular aspects by studying the clear photographs. I find the combination of text and visual to be the way I learn best. It's almost like watching the instructor demonstrate the technique.
The text is concise, yet gets the procedure across. I want to review and then cut lumber as opposed to reading for an extended time. The photographs are well produced and frequently clear up questions I have from the text. The variety of techniques included stimulates me to try other ways of doing the joinery to develop my own variations and adds to my repetoire. Since a single technique may not work out for a particular situation, having a number of ways to do a particular joint comes in handy when solving woodworking dilemas.
All in all, I found this to be a very beautiful and helpful book.

I am a beginning cabinetmaking student at a local community and technical college and was looking for something on joinery to supplement the classroom text. The Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery by Gary Rogowski is a lovely volume on several of the techniques that have been discussed both in class and in the text. It illustrates them more clearly with photos of the process, than either of the latter sources and helps me understand better what the instructor has in mind when he makes suggestions for my projects. More importantly the book provides more than one way of producing the joints, using different types of equipment to achieve the same results. Since I expect to set up a small shop on a restricted budget, at least to begin with, I know that I will often have to "make do" with the equipment I happen to have on hand, and I think that this book will help me do that. While I am still a little too much of a novice to have yet discovered the faults in the book of which the other reviewers have written, I hope to be able to add my own notes to the methods discussed as I gain more experience, enlarging the information provided with details of my own efforts and those of my classmates (in fact we are expected to keep a journal for class with just this type of data). I also see the book as a list of basic techniques to try before I have graduated.