Each chapter begins with a simple one-page overview, and a detailed chronology to put content into context, followed by text clearly divided by sub-headings to aid note-taking. Areas of debate and discussion within each topic are clearly highlighted, and there are suggestions for further reading. Most of each chapter is then taken up with worked essay and source questions, from all three exam boards, with further practice questions for students to do alone. The book concludes with an excellent glossary, and useful brief biographies of the main characters encountered in the text.

If your specification covers several USA topics then you might consider this as a basic textbook. It does, however, seem to fall between two stools; to me, as a text book, it does not contain enough detail to fully explore the topics – interested students will clearly want more; and as an exam guide, whilst containing plenty of excellent examples of essays and source questions, it carries little explanation as to why these are good.