This book is an excellent treatise on how to measure project performance from both a cost and schedule perspective. This is what Earned Valued Analysis is all about. The book never gets too complicated and is easy to follow the whole way (200 pages). A word of caution - this may be too much material to digest if you are trying to prepare for the PMP. Rita Mulcahy's PMP Exam Prep has enough information on Earned Value Analysis that will easily help you get through that section on the PMP exam. But as soon as you obtain your PMP certification, I would highly recommend making the mastery of the material in this book your next goal. The real payoff in applying the project management principles comes when you are able to measure the project performance on top of controlling project performance and presenting the results to your project sponsors.
By the way, the concepts involved in Earned Value Analysis are extremely simple. It is amazing that so much control over your project can be attained by paying attention to the simple concepts of Earned Value, Planned Value, Actual Cost, and the related concepts of CPI and SPI. After setting up the project baseline to calculate these variables on a frequent basis, you are ready to control and predict the future of the project.
The first four chapters of the book go into the overall concepts and the history of Earned Value. Chapters 5-10 address how to set up your project for fully utilizing the power of the Earned Value concepts - all the way from setting up the scope of the project to forecasting. Chapter 11 discusses how the concepts apply to the private sector and Chapter 12 deals with the legal implications.
The authors are related to Primavera Systems (the leading provider of Project Management Software for the Engineering & Construction industries) either as CEO or consultant to Primavera. PMI used to recommend this as required reading to prepare for the PMP exam but I am not sure if they still do. In either case, I don't believe it is required reading. I tried to read it before the PMP exam and I couldn't digest the material because there was too much on my mind already. But now that I have passed the PMP exam, I have thoroughly enjoyed learning the concepts and applying them to my current projects.
I hope everyone masters this subject and more projects in the world would end up successful. Good luck!