I have to say this book was perfect. It's written with the assumption that you know algebra and trigonometry (you'll also need a little bit of calculus if you want to completely absorb chapter 18) and goes from there to describe linear algebra step-by-step. I was struggling with concepts like Eigenvectors, Gaussian elimination, matrix inversion, etc. but after reading through this book and working all the exercises (most of which have answers in the back for self-study), I'm actually finding myself "thinking" in linear algebra.The first third or so of the book covers 2D linear algebra, and has a bit of a bias towards graphics problems. It covers things like line intersections and "closest point to a line" as well as rotations, shears, translations, etc. The next third or so extends these concepts out to 3D (still with sort of a graphics bias) and introduces 3D-only concepts such as the cross product. Finally, the last third introduces the abstract N-dimensional perspective that doesn't have a graphical interpretation. This is where it discusses things like least-squares estimation and orthonormalization - the really useful (but abstract) bits of linear algebra.With the first two thirds of the book to back it up, I found the really abstract concepts (which most authors seem to want to start with) relatively easy to absorb - which is really a pretty amazing accomplishment.I also can't recommend the chapter exercises highly enough. Most of them had answers in the back, so you can check your work (including these ought to be a no-brainer for writers of math books, but evidently there are quite a few math book writers with, well, no brains...) There was a perfect mix of "check your understanding" type questions and "stretch your brain a bit" exercises, but the book itself was entirely self-contained; as long as you're comfortable with basic trigonometry, you'll have no trouble figuring out the answers to the authors questions with just the material in the chapter.