Thank you Uniwatcher, that is extremely kind!
Here’s my view FWIW: it is difficult and time-consuming to unearth what an honors program at an institution really looks like and how it is experienced by students. The nature and quality of an honors program depends on a number of factors, including if there is a residential component and if so how it functions; what the availability, structure, course offerings, and persistence are of “honors” classes and discussion sections; the inclusion of features like preferential registration priority; the culture and integration of the honors program within the greater university; how admission to the honors program is handled; and whether the honors program is an institutional feature that is maintained through the entire course of a student’s studies (rather than say just the first two years).
The book does as thorough examination of those sorts of things as possible with the data the author has available to him. I believe his efforts have triggered some institutions to send him data not generally available and/or data organized around the honors college that is otherwise found in different, unconnected corners that would be difficult to pull together.
Are there limitations? Sure. Is he open about them? Seems so based on my reading of his materials. He basically uses tiers instead of straight ratings, but he downplays even the tiers (noting lots of schools have strong sub ratings in areas that may be particularly important to a given student), and the value here is really in the depth of treatment. He is absolutely transparent that he does not have the resources (I.e. time - he isn’t a national magazine or Princeton Review) or in some instances the data to do a write up of all colleges every year that have honors programs. The data matters to him - thankfully. Read the page he linked above, and you’ll find transparent and substantive disclosures about why some schools are not evaluated based on available data, and that he takes on some new schools every cycle but does not purport to review them all.
There is, in my view, no resource on honors programs that is as focused and helpful as this one. Schiols can say they have an honors program, but finding out how they operate is a tough slog that the author has taken on. Like any resource, it has its limits and should be used alongside other resources, school visits, etc. But its limits are disclosed by the author and do not detract from the information that is provided about the schools that are discussed.
And I would have said every word of that without the kind Kindle offer!