While some of the exercises may be helpful to some users, beginners will get lost in quite a few places. I managed fine because not only am I a bit past intermediate skills, but I have many years' experience as a senior tech writer. The problem is one that started several years' ago with the Adobe books, which used to be excellent.In addition to dozens of typographical errors, steps are often missing and some are even wrong. I pointed out this problem to Adobe with their first release of the "Classroom" book for InDesign. Guess they're not listening because the volume for Illustrator CS is definitely not worth the money. Pick out one of the other well-reviewed volumes.Don't buy this one!