Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This book was the only book I purchased when it came out just a few months ago for the CISSP. I studied from only this book. I had a very minimal background in networking.. but substantial knowledge of programming and years of experience programming professionally. The test took me 4 hours and I did pass the first try. How I used this book: 1. First time I read the book I did two chapters of reading per week. The first time through reading I gathered all of the high level concepts from the book. I was not reading for extreme detail because my brain could not possibly remember so much. I also avoided all practice questions. (I find that if you do questions right after reading naturally you will do well... you just read it!) 2. The second time I went through the book I took a notebook and wrote down every "Exam Essential" item from the end of each chapter onto a piece of paper along with the chapter it was from. Exam Essentials is the special section where the author has taken the time to highlight all of the things he thinks you MUST know to take the test. He wrote one for each chapter and this is where this book is awesome. If I didn't understand one of the Exam Essential items I went to that chapter and read in extreme detail about the concept and took notes so I would not have to look it up again. 3. So I had my notebook with about 30 pages of notes, (there are about 21 chapters so each chapter was a page or so) using long term memory tricks I memorized every single page of my notes. The trick I used was walking around my apartment (in my mind) and visually associating things with the test. (Each step of my staircase became a layer in the OSI model and I envisioned the technology for that layer sitting on the step as an example. Memory professionals who memorize decks of cards use association all the time. Please take some time on Google and learn how to do this kind of memory work. It will benefit you greatly in school and life in general if you learn to do this.) The author already told me what I had to know.. so I made sure I memorized it. 4. During the last phase I simply did all the practice questions the author provided both in the book and on their website. If I didn't know something I made a note. At the end of all the thousands of test questions I had another 2 or 3 pages of notes to add to my memory. On another note I did one practice exam a day to be sure I could not remember questions because of the sheer volume of them. Then I waited 10 days and did all the practice exam questions again... guess what? I could not remember the questions and it felt like all new tests again. Great way to reinforce the concepts by doing the exams more than once. I took the test in January 2016. I marked the questions I was not sure on and did all the questions I was fairly certain on first. This took two hours. Then I went through and did all the questions I was not so sure on for two more hours. The feeling I had during the exam was one of dread. The questions felt like they were written by a lawyer and required an intense concentration to even understand what they were asking. At one point I told myself I can always try again and read another book if I failed. The practice questions were tricky in this book but they are not written the same strange way as the real exam in my opinion. Anyways I did pass the test. I was quite happy! So do I recommend the book? Absolutely! It was enough for me to pass first try in 4 hours.