I'm not a beginner but I got this book any way because I'm a how to guitar book junkie. I have around 20 of these and similar books and this is by far the easiest one to understand. I also have to say that if you not a Metallica fan you probley wont lie this boof because every exaple in the book besides chords and scales is parts of Metallica songs. Also there is not one full tab in this book just litlle parts. If you like Metaliica and want to learn to play guitar this book will get you started out. it comes with a cd with clips of music that goes along with all of the song parts in the book, the chord and scales are not on the cd. I've been playing guitar for six year and this book has helped me with reading music and what symbols in the music(not tab) stand for. It also explains upstrokes and downstrokes withusing the word Puppet(upstroke=pup, downstroke=pet)and the book also explains other things in the book like that also wich I think is really good. I just can't say enuff good things about this book, if you want to learn guitar and like Metallica get this book. The only bad thing with this book is some of the tabs sound right but are are not correct. But this doesn't harm the book in any way, also learning the correct tab will be no problem. And some of the tab is incorrect to show how to play scales different and things like that which is good, but the Sandman intro tab in this book is wrong but you play both versions the same so adjusting to the correct tab take little or no effort. For the price of this book you can't go wrong.