I bought the Idiots Guide to Orchestration while being aware of exceptionally strong criticism of the book. The first critiques I encountered on Amazon were clearly from experts in the field who, to my mind, were trying to impress me with their great knowledge. My reaction to those critiques was really "where is your book?". So I bought the Idiot's guide. I'm a jazz guitarist trying to glean whatever I can without an enormous commitment to years of study. The ideas about harmonisation and inversion are solid and reliable information. The also remind me that their are many inversions possible that are outside of the possibilities of the guitar. The biggest criticism by other reviewers was regarding the included CD. The sampled sounds are, in many cases, absolutely awful. But I think his musical intention is accurate enough. I'm still able to learn from them (although the big band sounds and the trumpet in particular are some of the worst in history!). So, I'm still reading the book. I'm reasonable happy with it. It didn't cost me $100!! It was cheap and it was an "idiot's guide" - basic stuff. So, in summary, helpful, fairly clear, not expensive and quite enjoyable if you can live with the poor audio samples. But their is much more to the subject, clearly.