Crafted by a master of hyperbole, this author has mastered the art of bringing coffee table reading on genetics to the masses

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.

In my opinion, the book was somewhat interesting, however, the content was rather general and not presented in depth. For example, one part of the book presented some "rules of thumb" for assessing reliability of information.(For example, ask yourself whether you believe it, ask yourself whether you would invest your own money based on the research, etc.) I thought this section was somewhat interesting, but it did not address issues of reliability in objective measurable terms, it did not address the various sources of information in detail, and it did not give remedies for overcoming difficulties with dubious information or synthesizing information. The treatment of market research specifically was similarly shallow and general. This was somewhat dissapointing considering the cover blurb called the book "profound". On the other hand, although the book was rather general, it was written in an engaging style and the content is certainly worth knowing. So, it may be useful for someone as a first book on how to sort through their e-mail inbox or to get a general idea of what type of research is included in "market research".Overall, the book seemed to address how to get a feel for the reliability of incoming information rather than how to "release the power" of knowledge.

I bought this book and also a general purpose Unix administration book ("Essential System Administration : Help for Unix System Administrators (Nutshell Handbook)" by AEleen Frisch). Nine time out of ten the solution was in the excellent general purpose book and not in this System V book which turned out to be really disappointing. Buy a different book.