The main contributions the author, Vernon Dale Jones, makes to the study of the bureaucracy in Downsizing the Federal Government: The Management of the Public Sector Workforce Reductions are twofold. First, the author summarizes and contrasts the various attempts made over the past thirty years to reduce the federal bureaucracy. Second, the author provides the reader with an excellent bibliography on the subject of public sector downsizing. Although the author takes great pains to explain the theoretical framework behind the book, the methodology behind his study and the relevance of this work to the field of public administration the reader tends to become distracted by these references and explanations and finds it difficult to identify any relevant practical solutions to the problem of the inevitable decrease of the federal bureaucracy.

Here are my thoughts on this book.

Pros: 1. Very reasonably priced as a comprehensive review book and supposedly a money back guarantee.
2. It is current and up to date (as of the April 2003 exam)
3. It has a pretty good variety and quantity of examples and practice problems.

Cons: 1. There are a large number of errors in the example and practice problems. I found at least 50 errors in using this book as a review guide and it is difficult, especially on some of the example problems where I would wonder for half an hour where I went wrong. Some of the errors are obvious, others are difficult or near impossible to spot if you are trying to relearn this material and remember very little. I am sure there are significantly more errors since my review did not cover the book comprehensively and I'm sure I missed a lot as well.
2. The text is not very well written. Some sections go into too much detail while others simply scratch the surface. There were times when I learned more from reading the EIT handbook than from this review book.
3. Lastly, I was a little disappointed when I went to take the practice exam and I found several identical questions to the practice problems provided in the different chapters. The least they could have done was make sure not to reuse questions so that when we'd like to take the practice exam we haven't just seen the questions from review sections.