This book is great for an overview of percussion instruments around the world. The history of these percussion instruments is show through facts and folklore. The massive amounts of photographs in this book help with the indentification of the many, many instruments. This book is great if you want a brief overview of the history of percussion, but if you want something that is a little deeper than that I would find another book. This book is rather simple and relies on the pictures to do most of the work. Still, this is a cool book.