I’ve been reading the text and the first exploration on sequences is poorly placed, in my opinion. It’s too out of the mainstream. Unit 3 on polynomials and rational functions is what most students will be looking for. Also the Dummies book for the TI-89 shows the glory of lots of editors: it gives a slow, easy start and builds. I’m still on with five stars: The Dummies book doesn’t ever go deep. Brendan, the author, does with fractals, linear programming, and even something like abstract algebra — Unit 2, Patterns and Properties of Numbers. The author misses one big one: the current best use of a calculator is regression and modeling. He should try for a book on deterministic modeling that explains what the calculator gives the contemporary world. For such a book the history of algebra’s evolution becomes irrelevant, but algebra becomes immediately real, relevant, and, indeed, critical to our species success: we need to insist every politician speak in terms of models or we are not going to solve modern problems. We are going to go extinct.