Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A Major Disappointment
As a high school Latin teacher, I was delighted to see this book the other day on a colleague's desk. There are many SAT II prep guides which are widely available for other subjects, but I was unaware that any existed for Latin. Naturally, I was pleased to see something purporting to fill a very serious need. However, after I scrutinized its contents, I was disappointed to see that the book was, as other reviewers have noted, packed with errors. It is a sloppy work, hastily prepared, and of dubious value for any serious Latin student. The authors either don't know Latin or didn't bother to vet their own work product. Many of the questions either fail completely to set forth a correct answer or feature an answer that is grossly inaccurate. Who needs a prep book that is filled with these sorts of errors? Preparing students for the SAT II in Latin should not be an exercise in explaining to them why, for a given question in their workbook, none of the answers is correct. I would urge the authors to try again: eliminate the blatant inaccuracies, then publish an edition that has some usefulness for the students who need it.
Rating: - Caveat Emptor
This volume is one of the only tools available to prepare for the Latin SAT-II. I recently purchased it to consider ordering it for my Latin III class, many of whom take the test. The book was a serious disappointment. It's one virtue is the number of practice questions it offers; though some of them are from such old tests that they don't provide much benefit for today's test takers. Unfortunately, however, the book is riddled with serious errors that will confuse students. On a single page containing seven questions, I found five substantive errors. For example, as the correct translation of "Pueros prohibui ne domi irent" we are offered "I have forbidden the boys", although the secondary sequence "irent" forces the simple past translation, "I forbade". A question about "celerius navigabant" offers no answer that reflects the comparative degree of the adverb. On the same page there is a use of credo with the accusative, rather than dative case, and the following unintelligible item: "Dixi eum libros quos lectus esses scribere." Numerous questions have no correct answer; some have two; some grammar questions are missing their verbs. The problem goes well beyond typos, though there are plenty of those. In one reading passage, interiacebat, "(it) lay between" is glossed as coming from intericio, "throw between", and violentiam loses its -i-, rendering "quae huic urbi per violentam ignium acciderunt" difficult to construe. This error is compounded by the fact that students are asked to choose the best translation of this sentence in a question that repeats the mistake. An equally serious deficit in the book is the lack of explanatory material. Students will have to consult a teacher to understand their mistakes. The book has the potential to undermine the confidence of capable students, as they fail to answer the many erroneous and misleading questions. If anything else existed, I would recommend that students avoid this book; as it is, students should only use it with the guidance of an experienced Latin teacher, who can also serve as copy editor.
Rating:  - I Wish There Were Something Better
This book is the only game in town for Latin SAT II Prep, and as such, it is serviceable. You should know, however, that it will not help you figure out why your answers were incorrect, nor how to improve your scores except by trial and error. Although the book contains many mock tests, most of them are so old that they don't match the material currently tested. Finally, my class and I found a few errors in the questions. So caveat emptor!
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