I bought this book to carry with me during my commute to work. It is about the size of a paperback novel and it is very conducive to studying while you travel. That is about the only thing it has going though.

Frankly, after running across mistake after mistake I got more than a little peeved. Here is a company selling an overpriced book, that basically just requires typing up some definitions, and they didn't even have the courtesy to do a proof-read. Mistakes I found include:

-Misspelled words
-Words in the incorrect alphabetical order
-Using the word itself as it's own definition
-Using the word itself at it's synonym
-Forgetting to list the synonyms
-Repeating the same definition twice for the same word ( ex. "strong; forceful; strong"
-Using words found later in the book as the definition for the earlier "easier" words

I know these are nit-picky things, but there is just something annoying about holding a 14 dollar book meant to teach you new words and realizing that the company selling it didn't even run a spell-check. Plus this book is really bare-bones(no learning activities or root word lists like in Barron's), combine that with a hefty price tag, not a lot of words (490), and lots of typos and you start feeling like you got bamboozled.

If you really need a small book for travel then maybe it would warrant a purchase (although you might be better off with Barrons Essential Words book). It obviously does a satisfactory job of telling you a word and then it's definition, but you could get more bang for your buck elsewhere.