If you currently attend a community college hoping to attend your state university, and know very little about the college admissions process, this is the book for you! If you are like me, looking at elite colleges and knowing the way the system works fairly well, this book is a waste of time. It is written at about a 4th grade level, making it so I could get through the entire book in about an hour. In addition, it only provided the basics, and left me with no new insights. There is far better information on the web, I am sorry I wasted my 10 bucks!

Transferring to a new college can be a daunting and frustrating task. In this lucid and up-to-date book, Professor Eric Freedman makes this process as efficient as possible. It is a valuable resource for every student who is transferring to a new college, or who is thinking of doing so.

This book made my blood boil. It distorts history, misstates the law, inaccurately critiques past court decisions in the field of habeas corpus and has an antidemocratic/antifederalism message that conflicts with the Constitution. Freedman's view of the Suspension Clause is contrary to fact and history. This type of expansive view of criminal justice would be more intellectually honest if it would call for the elimination of the states and the federalization of all criminal acts.

Professor Freedman does the great public service of explaining the origins and application of the writ of habeas corpus -- the "Great Writ" -- at the same time as the Courts and Congress are doing their best to define the writ out of existence. Much of the initial portion of the book explains why John Marshall's interpretation in Ex Parte Bollman of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789 as limiting the Federal Court's ability to grant habeas corpus relief to State prisoners is wrong in light of the Suspension Clause of the Constitution, which provides that "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended". Although Professor Freedman makes some powerful arguments, I seriously doubt that he will have any success in convincing today's habeas-hating courts to overrule an 1807 decision by the great John Marshall, and therefore expand the writ, incorrect dicta or not. (Bollman, like Marbury v. Madison, is an example of Marshall's legal legerdemain in dealing with his political nemesis and cousin Thomas Jefferson -- in Marbury, he "wrote a decision spiked with harsh dicturm, but did not order the Jefferson Administration to deliver Marbury's commission. In Bollman, Marshall ordered the Jefferson Administration to release the prisoners, but wrote a decision softened by placatory dictum."). Still, in an age where some seek to soften Constitutional protections under the expedient of preventing crime or terrorism, Prof. Freedman's cogent defense of this fundamental right is worth all the readers it can get.