Peterson’s Ultimate GRE Tool Kit by Drew JohnsonThomson Peterson’s, 2004

As an introduction to the test format, this book is OK, but it could be much better-edited: there are some errors, both in the text and in the practice tests. Example: on one practice test, the book says that the solutions of -x² = 2x-15 are x=-3, 5 because in solving the problem, the author accidentally changes 2x to -2x. There’s a PDF on the Peterson’s website that lists corrections to some errors, including this one. Even in the correction, though, they only correct the error in the first two steps of solving the problem: which means that the final answer is still listed as -3,5, which is (still) wrong! On p 91, the area of a trapezoid is given as A = (b₁+b₂)(h), but it’s actually that divided by two, which the book makes clear in an example on the next page. There are problems in the verbal sections, too: on p 204, a “word origin” box” about the Latin “frangere = to break” appears above the word “nadir.” The same word origin box appears on p 214, this time correctly positioned above the word “refractory.” According to the diagnostic test at the start of the book, “acrid” is a better antonym for “salubrious” than “deleterious” is. Somehow, I suspect there are better GRE-prep books out there.