Schaum's Quick Guide to Writing Great Essays

Rating:
Summary: Too Brief--Essay Types NOT Covered
Review: I am STILL seeking a general how-to essay book that covers all the rhetorical essay pattern types, even after buying Schaum's Quick Guide to Writing Great Essays, because this book does not fulfil the promise of it's title, or misleading descriptive information. I received this book yesterday, skimmed through it immediately, and am greatly disappointed.

Schaum's Quick Guide to Writing Great Essays is only OK as a basic reference guide for grammar, sentence and paragraph structure, with one generic outline. None of its chapters cover the types of essays, such as Compare & Contrast, Persuasive, Descriptive, and so on. This book does not give examples of well written essays, either. Instead, it gives extremely brief example sentences, and occasional paragraph samples only.

One will NOT learn how to write a specific type of essay, which one would expect to from the book title, description, marketing and cover information. I feel incredibly cheated, since returning it for a refund will cost almost half the price of Schaum's Quick Guide to Writing Great Essays. I would recommend "Elements of Style", "Essays and Themes", or "How to Write Better Essays" instead, as better reference and how-to books on writing essays, with examples, rhetorical essay types and every day applications of essay writing.

Lastly, the book claims to contain exercises for practicing the concepts within, yet there wasn't a single exercise to be found on examination of the actual book. If you already know how to write great essays, and understand the various structure types for essay outlining, then MAYBE this book would be OK as a reference or reminder of a simple concept one has forgotten and needs to look up. Unfortunately, it's claim as a guide to writing great essays is completely false. Save your money.