Clep(r) History of the U.S. I Book + Online

I took the exam today and scored a 68, and I never took American History in high school or college. The only part with which I had some prior knowledge was the American Revolution and the Constitution. I read the entire review the book gave, watched all of the videos on Khan Academy related to this time period, took the practice exams in the book, read over the explanation for each question regardless of whether I answered correctly, took the Official College Board CLEP practice exam, and learned all of the terms in the glossary. Someone previously has made a great 442 term Quizlet you can use to memorize the terms!Overall, the book is great on providing the information you need to know to pass. Because a 50 is equal to an 80, there is no point in the author teaching every topic a professor would cover in a college equivalent course. However, it is impossible to remember everything the book teaches you, so I highly recommend that you study for the test with this book in combination with another resource. The resource I would highly recommend is Khan Academy. It will both teach you about topics that are not covered in this book and reinforce what you learned in the book. I recommend reading a chapter from the book and then watching the videos and reading the articles on Khan Academy. Take the quizzes and exams on Khan Academy; they help!The book unfortunately is unnecessarily elaborate on details about the battles of wars. What is most important to know is the outcome of the battles, where they took place, who commanded them, and the degree to which the winning party won (Were there a lot of deaths or just a few?). The book talks extensively about the battle tactics; such as the three-pronged attack, "the main southward thrust", or how "Grant circled around to take by way of the back door"; and goes deeply into specifics about the battles without any pictures. I did not see any detail like this asked on any of the practice exams in the book, on the official practice CLEP, or on the real CLEP, so don't worry if it's hard to picture some of these abstract ideas; you don't need to know them.Despite all of the author's details on battles, the book is missing several big ideas as other reviewers have mentioned. This is why I recommend watching Khan Academy.The practice exams are what I was referring to in the title of my review. Only take them when you have gone through all of the information in the review at least once so that you can get an accurate idea of how much more you have to review. The practice exams in the book ask a lot of questions about the years when events happened (In which year did X occur? A. 18XX, B. 17XX, C. 16XX, etc.). You won't find many if any questions like this on the official practice CLEP or the real CLEP. I had no questions like these at all. You would see on the official practice CLEP that many questions say "In the early 19th century". The practice exams from this book also ask you to do math when looking at charts; I didn't have to do any of that on the official practice CLEP or real CLEP. Overall, the official practice exam is easier than the ones in the book.Surprisingly, I thought the real CLEP was even easier than the official practice CLEP even though they should be equal.I gave this book five stars because it got me a high score. However, it is poorly written. As I said earlier, there are unnecessary details about battles, and it lacks treatment of some big ideas. Many geographical details are futile to mention because there is no map, and it is difficult to picture every single event without a map. This is why I used Khan Academy. It's a very dry read but isn't too bad if you read it in chunks. If you quiz yourself with the glossary, you will find that sometimes the term is in the definition, so you aren't really quizzing yourself. Nonetheless, this book and some other resources will get you to pass. Good luck!

Used this book & nothing else, the 2 practice exams were great. Passed with flying colors!

After 20 years of not attending a single history class since high school (and no passion for the subject,) I buckled down and studied this book and (free) online supplemental material for about 100 hours over 2 weeks and got a 71 (50 to pass out of 80) on my US History I CLEP. This book was my main source of information, for about 75-80% of it, but the CLEP exam was nothing like the REA practice tests and included mostly conceptual information not detailed in this book. I had read enough reviews from other CLEP takers to understand the actual exam would be highly conceptual and less focused on dates (although there were a handful of need-to-know chronological information and names of events/treaties) so I referenced historical websites and other tools for that extra conceptual padding. The book doesn't include maps, so if you can't picture the places in your head, look up visuals online. You'll need to fully understand the transitions of territory over time and what it represents in terms of values and culture at a given point in time and this can be made easier to understand with a map.This book gives you a solid chronological platform of information with names, dates, and basic reasons, but you need to understand how the events or people interact with each other and affect other groups, places, and future developments. Feelings and viewpoints of groups or individuals about places, people, and events matter on the actual CLEP exam and are touched on in this book, but not as detailed as I would’ve personally liked in order to feel confident about several of my answers on the official exam. Only 1-2 people on the actual exam weren't referenced in the book (Finney, for example,) but I read it twice, made a thorough 50-60 page outline of everything from the Constitution, US Presidents, wars, treaties, people, and chronological events to review. If you ONLY relied on this book, you MIGHT pass, but to be confident, definitely use additional sources to supplement. Know who belonged to which political party and why, which this book covers, but you’ll need more sources (unless you're naturally insightful about potential sentiments based on the given descriptions) to also understand what kind of individual would've supported or opposed a party, event, or movement throughout history, what parties or movements would authors have belonged to, and why would an immigrant come from their specific country (and when) to America and where did they settle and why? This kind of information is touched on in the book, but not in great detail.If you fully understand all the information in the book and focus on how groups or individuals feel about people or events (for example, details about what kind of person would have been singled out during the Salem Witch trials, who would've sided with Bacon or Berkeley before and during Bacon's Rebellion, or why would someone join Shay in his rebellion) you should be able to pass by reading between the lines of the provided details. The extra research will simply help you be more confident so you will KNOW the correct answer when seeing the question instead of whittling your answer to the top 2 choices via power of elimination (which I did on several questions.) Even after it was all said and done, I only answered about 75-80 questions of the 120 with absolute confidence. That would've been enough to pass, but just barely. And that was after really absorbing the 160+ pages of actual history contained in this book (the rest of the pages are practice tests, glossary, etc.) This book will give you the basics and the facts, but not the thorough understanding of conceptuals to pass with confidence as a sole source of material. Definitely happy with the purchase as I paid for no other source, but I did use about 3-4 free online CLEP-prep sources and historical websites (from actual historical organizations, not collective user sites) for more in-depth information about certain events or people.

Even just after solving questions,I got 50.Going throughly every pages helps you to get good marks in CLEP.Useful for CLEP users

This book is wonderful, my homeschool children have ENJOYED working out of it, actually more than even watching videos on Modern States. Which is truly odd for them, because they love videos. Concise, complete, and easy to understand, this book has been essential to our study (and hopeful passing!) of the subject. Definitely purchase and see if it's for you and if not return it. Was well worth it for this saver singe mom.