To be fair I should add that I did not read this book cover to cover, but I did read a great deal of it so I feel I'm still able to provide a review. I would have loved to give this book five stars because I really enjoyed using it. The book uses more examples and practical applications than any other textbook I have used and it's fairly easy to read. Unfortunately there are two really important things this book was lacking. One the index is terrible, and in my opinion a great index is a giant must have for even the most basic textbook. Two the online component costs extra. I paid almost $200 for this book and it didn't include the online support which is pretty standard with text books this days, they do however offer the option to purchase the online support for an additional fee.
I read this textbook over the course of a semester for one of my graduate classes. For the most part, the information was presented in a readable format. Some chapters were more boring than others, but overall I do feel I learned qutie a bit from this textbook.