When I write this review, I am really referring to both volumes of the Algebra 1 series. I am a college engineering student and just completed my fourth calculus course. For the past year I have tried to help my younger brother in his Algebra class because this book didn t help at all. Examples are insufficient and the book and tests are riddled with errors. The teacher had to work out all the problems because there were so many mistakes that he could not trust his answer key. A sample of this book s terrible teaching method can be seen when it expects students to use the discriminant to find the nature of the roots for a quadratic equation. It simply has students complete a table in problem number 44 or something and then expects students to be able to tell from the results what the nature of roots for a quadratic equation are on a quiz. Few students succeeded in accomplishing this. In the chapter discussing radicals, the definition of a perfect square is never mentioned! Also students are told to tell the difference between rational and irrational roots by looking at their calculator display. Perhaps if you only use this book as a source for problems, it might be OK. But it is nearly impossible to try and learn something from this book which seems to be fixated on providing pretty graphics instead of relevant examples. My advice: Buy some other Algebra book. It is not possible to put too much effort into the search for a good algebra book because algebra is really the language of science and engineering that needs to become second nature. I haven t seen them myself, but I have heard good things about Algebra 1 by Paul A. Foerster as well as Algebra: Structure and Method by Richard G. Brown, Mary P. Dolciani, Robert H. Sorgenfrey, et. al. You might want to take a look at these books.