L. J. Smith Books

I am teaching from this book this summer, and I have not had the problems that other reviewers have described. This book is written for people with a pretty good understanding of high school algebra - after all, it is a college algebra book. It is not watered down at all, and the material is presented in some depth. However, I have found that this book does a really good job of warning students about common mistakes. I have found it clear (I can't say that for every algebra book I've used.) and my students have not complained, either. I would use this book again.

I'm getting ready to take Intermediate Algebra using a text by this author. I will be required to take College Algebra next term and am hoping, after reading your reviews, that this is NOT the book that will be required for the class. Did anyone get value from "math help" websites? Thanks!

I am by no means a math wizard. I am, however, able to learn things on my own fairly well. This book makes that nearly impossible though. This book gives very few examples, and the few that they do give rarely give any clues to what needs to be done to solve the equations. It also fails to really teach anything. It's by no means for a student that is going to be going through an online course where they won't be interfacing with an instructor. I would not have enrolled into the course for online schooling if I had know this books was going to be this terrible. I strongly don't recommend this book!!!

This text is a pathetic excuse for educational material. It gives meager examples and many are not even applicable to the chapter exercises. By far this is the poorest written text I have encountered in three years of college.

After reading the previous reviews for this book, I realized one question kept surfacing. Why? Why did my instructor choose this book?
A very likely answer is this book could have been chosen based on the margin of profit the school bookstore makes off of it. I don't know this for certain, but I have encountered similiar problems with texts chosen when I was in college. A useless, high-priced text book was often a sign of a greedy college bookstore. I would tend to suspect this when we were required to spend quite a bit for inferior texts--esp. ones that changed editions often (requiring you to buy the 'newest' book). The instructor may have had little to do with the choice.
I don't have much to say about this particular book, but when in this type of situation there are a few steps you can take. Attend every class and take good notes. If you notice most of the other students don't understand a particular concept, go to the instructor and ask that the lesson be repeated. Use the book only to work the assigned problems- use your notes for the methods.
Hope this helps!

This text has numerous flaws whcih I will simply list: 1) There are numerous questions with more than a single correct answer and no "best" answer. 2) Often the answer key does not correspond to the question's numbers. For instance "A" is the correct answer, but in the explanation "B" is described as the correct answer. 3) There are pediatric questions in the adult medicine section. 4) Maybe 40+% of the surgical section is orthopoedic. 5) Some answers are suspect. For instance, some trauma questions provide no best answer. Which bad aswer should I pick? 6) Often it is unclear how to answer questions: i.e respond "true or false" to each possible answer, or single best answer. 7)Often questions are clumsily worded, with unclear directions.

Overall, the frequent mistakes do not inspire confidence in the reviewer. There is no clear sense that this review book might in any way correspond to the board exam. I wouldn't buy this book again!

The adult medicine section was extremely brief in content, had a lot of typos, and did not reflect the content of the shelf exam which focused on fatigue, shortness of breath, HTN, stroke, etc. The pediatrics and geriatrics sections were decent, but again the shelf focused on developmental behavior (not only on a single milestone).

One of the worst math books I have ever used! Examples are few and far between, and the explanations are confusing! Problems are often ambiguously worded and unclear! Considerable time is wasted simply attempting to determine what the the problem means! Horrible, simply and utterly horrible!

Unfortunately the book I recieved was a teachers edition and had no answer key in the back for the homework assignments. I am going to have to purchase a book from the bookstore so that I will be able to check my work on the homework.

This is a collection of short stories, arthurian-style etc..by other authors:
eg: "The Count of the Saxon Shore," , Kalvan Kingmaker,"

if it were not a required book for the college class i am taking i would never have bought or read this book.