This was the text book for my GIS class. It does a pretty good job of taking you through the program, step by step. There were a few times when I had a problem following the steps, or the program was not working correctly, but overall it was a good guide. Would have been ideal if you just picked this book up by yourself, with not class. The info in this guide could have easily just been taught in class without the text. The problems I have with this are I bought it for $70 bucks. That $70 bucks bought me a book that I was going to use for 3 months and never again, as the software is not super complicated, and I am technically savvy. But the main issue was the software that came with the book was a version behind by the time I got it. This caused major issues for me as I could not use the software from the book. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in learning the software solo. ( )