Rating: 
Summary: The essential guide to learning the banjo
Review: I strongly recommend "Earl Scruggs and the Five String Banjo" to anybody interested in learning the banjo, or other string instruments for that matter. It has a clear, common sense approach to learning music that is useful to all musicians. The book has helped many of my friends and me to become accomplished banjo players. However, as one of the other reviewers pointed out, it does contain a few errors in the tablature. There is a cassette tape associated with this book, which I highly recommend purchasing, if available. It contains music for each tablature being played by Earl Scruggs starting at the beginning of the book. This will help smooth out any inconsistencies in the tablature and will teach the importance of good timing and sticking to the melody. Very few people can match Earl's perfect sense of timing on the banjo.
Rating:
Summary: The best banjo book ever written
Review: This book is to bluegrass banjo as The Holy Bible is to Christianity. This book is wonderful. I would recommend it to anyone. I would recommend getting the audio tape for the book also.Earl is the best. Earl is the innovator. He is one of the few that is truly entitled to write a book.
Rating: 
Summary: Too much, too fast
Review: This book presents too much information too quickly. I'm a music teacher, and if I were to teach somebody banjo, I'd use a different book. The material just isn't sequenced properly. All of the tunes are fairly advanced, and there's not really any songs that a beginner could play. All there is for beginners is boring, repetitive exercises. The material on chords and music theory progresses far to quickly for most newcomers to the subject to understand. Earl Scruggs is certainly a master of the instrument, but his pedagogical techniques leave much to be desired. The book might be useful to somebody who has some background in music and some experience with a stringed instrument, like guitar. It also has a lot of good information about the instrument in general - it's construction, history, etc. One other thing - the binding makes it almost impossible to lay the book flat, which is very frustrating when you try to put it up on a music stand.
Rating:
Summary: Too much, too fast
Review: This book presents too much information too quickly. I'm a music teacher, and if I were to teach somebody banjo, I'd use a different book. The material just isn't sequenced properly. All of the tunes are fairly advanced, and there's not really any songs that a beginner could play. All there is for beginners is boring, repetitive exercises. The material on chords and music theory progresses far to quickly for most newcomers to the subject to understand. Earl Scruggs is certainly a master of the instrument, but his pedagogical techniques leave much to be desired. The book might be useful to somebody who has some background in music and some experience with a stringed instrument, like guitar. It also has a lot of good information about the instrument in general - it's construction, history, etc. One other thing - the binding makes it almost impossible to lay the book flat, which is very frustrating when you try to put it up on a music stand.
Rating: 
Summary: Essential book for bluegrass banjo players
Review: This is the de-facto standard for bluegrass banjo. It covers: the history of the banjo, how to read tablature, how to play the banjo (three-finger Scruggs style, of course), tablature for a over a dozen bluegrass classics, a great chapter on how to build a banjo, and finally a short biography of Earl. If you read this book, you will know your banjo well. What's amazing is the age of the book and how relevant every bit of the text still is today. Banjo's just haven't changed much! The only reason I don't give this book five stars is that it probably isn't for everybody. If you know nothing about music, it probably won't be sufficient. For example, if you don't know timing of musical notes (quarter notes, eighth notes, etc.) and how to work out the timing, this book (while it covers that subject very briefly) probably won't teach it to you. But if you have a basic understanding of timing, and have a banjo in your hand, this book will get you going. I look at it like this... it's a much better resource than Earl had at his disposal as a kid, and look where he's got to. So you and I have no excuses... ;-) This book used to have an LP album (sold separately) that had Earl playing the lessons for you to hear, and that has been transferred to cassette. (NOTE: The book comes with no media at all!) Perhaps if they came out with a CD-version of the cassette, and gave it to you inside the book, I would give the book 5 stars. I've looked, and only recently found the cassette at an online sheet music store. It's on the way! Happy picking!
Rating:
Summary: THE BANJO BIBLE WRITTEN BY THE BANJO PROPHET!
Review: This is the guy who developed the fast-pickin' style known as bluegrass, or really, "Scrugg's Style," banjo. This is the man who played 'The Beverly Hillbillies" song, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" (from the movie Bonnie & Clyde), and "Duelin' Banjos" from the movie "Deliverance." It's the book to show beginners and experienced ones alike the standard rolls, finger techniques, and breakdowns that every banjo player should know.
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