Barron's How to Prepare for Sat II: American History and Social Studies (10th ed)

Rating:
Summary: Book Seems Rather Hard
Review: I took the AP US history exam last year and received 5. Now for the fall I plan on taking the SAT II, so I bought the book and took the diagnostic test and got more than half wrong, the questions seemed impertinent to american history and ambiguous. But the book does cover the topic in depth and the summary is helpful. Don't feel dejected when doing poorly on the tests.

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive Review, Political slant after 20C, too hard.
Review: The history review section is very well organized, in presidential order, and is comprehensive: I used this book to study without taking a single course in US government and history and still got a score in the mid 700s.
However, as the book goes into the 20th century it gives a colored view of history. The Princeton Review represents both liberal and conservative view points such as on where the New Deal succeeded and failed, while Barons plunges on with no such commentary. While it was irrelevant(only a handful of questions come from the second half of the 20th century) I was really irritated time to time after 1960. Also, one of the ruling themes of the 90's-Clinton's scandals and corruption-was down played in a few short paragraphs.
And it goes without saying that Barons constantly strives and acheives, in all subjects, the status of 'Most Difficult SAT2 Test Maker'.(-not a good thing)
Study this book up to WW1 and go over another publisher's prep book.

Rating:
Summary: Not Highly Recommended
Review: This book contained a satisfactory review of American History and multiple practice tests. However, the questions on the practice tests were WAY out of line compared to the actual questions on the test. I took one practice tests that had about 1/4 of the questions on farm and labor history, while there were only about 2 questions about farm and labor history on the actual test. I consistently got about half of the questions right on the practice tests, yet I got a 770 on the actual SAT II. This book needlessly panicked me and there must be a better choice.