European History (Cliffs AP)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Study Tool
Review: The Cliffs is one of the best AP Euro review books. It's got excellent content, reviews all of the topics very thoroughly and concisely. You get all of the information you need, without being overloaded with extra facts. It also has a good basic timeline at the end of each chapter, which I like.

I had intentionally planned to read all of the hundreds of pages of notes I had taken on my textbook reading (McKay), but it was too much of an information overload, and was taking too much time. So instead, I spent the week before the exam reading and highlighting. It was a huge help, and I owe my 5 to my fantastic teacher, textbook, as well as this reviewbook.

The only problem is that the questions at the end of each chapter aren't nearly as hard as the real thing. Though the sample essays at the end of the book are fantastic, the practice test questions aren't very difficult either. So I reccommend definitely getting this book, along with maybe the Barrons. I didn't buy any other review book myself, just relied on this book + the old exams my teacher gave us. But it can't hurt to have another source, just for extra practice or details one of them might miss. Good luck!

Rating:
Summary: Should not be totally depended upon
Review: This book was thorough with explaining each of the main topics and it has everything major in european history that you need to know for the ap test. However, this book had NO MENTION whatsoever of the social aspect of european history. AP has begun to add more social history questions, and this book did not include any of it. In addition, there were grammar and spelling mistakes. There also weren't enough practice tests, but they gave a pretty good indicator of what you would get on the real AP, excluding the DBQ and essays. So this book is good to use if you want to use it as a supplemental book to your AP class, but do not solely use it for the AP.