Review of The Princeton Review’s Cracking the AP World History Exam (2008 Edition) by Roy Flores

If you are taking the World History Advanced Placement exam you will definitely want to pick this study guide up as soon as possible. I took WHAP (World History Advanced Placement) my sophomore year, which was last year, and this book made it so much easier. In our district we are assigned The Earth and Its Peoples and it was the dullest and longest text book I have ever read, and also one of the most useless. The book was filled with a bunch of extra information that wasn’t mentioned on the WHAP exam. If you have the Princeton Review’s guide not only will you be prepared for the exam, but you really will not even need to read your assigned text book because the Princeton Review’s guide covers all major dates and events.

Also, the Princeton Review’s guide is interesting and is filled with witty humor (i.e. “Lydians, Phoenicians, and Hebrews, Oh My!”). Okay, maybe that is kind of corny, but it is much better than some boring text book. This review book also reads much easier than most other review books that I have seen which makes it more likely that you will actually read it.

An important feature that the Princeton Review’s guide offers is how to handle the test itself. The guide outlines and explains how to answer multiple choice questions and how to write efficient essays that will get you to that 5 you want. The guide also comes with two practice exams with answers and explanations. And trust me when I say that the tests in this book are much harder than the actual test, so you will be ready when you take the real World History exam. Another convenient aspect of this guide is that it is divided up in five time periods: Ancient Stuff: Around 8000 B.C.E to Around 600 C.E., Really Old Stuff: Around 600 C.E. to Around 1450 C.E., Old Stuff: Approximately 1450 to Around 1750 C.E., Not So Old Stuff: Sometime Around 1750 to About 1914 C.E., and finally Recent Stuff: Around 1914 to the Present. This comes in handy in terms of writing the essay, because the review helps you separate you time periods and group similar things together.

All-in-all this is a great review book and I recommend it for you as my teacher recommended it for me. If you study hard and use the strategies and information in The Princeton Review’s Cracking the AP World History Exam I have no doubt that you make a 3 or higher. And another word of advice; I suggest that you also purchase the Sparknotes World History AP kit because the note cards and time chart that it comes with are extremely helpful in those few weeks of study before the WHAP exam.