The ARRL no longer publishes
Now You're Talking which may be why you don't see it mentioned much anymore. The ARRL Technician class study book is now called
Ham Radio License Manual:
ARRL :: Licensing, Education & Training :: Ham Radio License Manual Revised 2nd Edition
When I used
Now You're Talking 22 years ago, it
did contain the question pool, but the emphasis was on studying the material and not the questions/answers. The current book is built on the same premise.
Many, many years ago (like 32), a guy named Dick Bash (KL7IHP) broke the barrier of ham radio exams. The FCC was very "proactive" in preparing and releasing exams and there was no such thing as VE examinations. In order to upgrade, you had to haul your behind to one of the FCC field offices where usually a very friendly front desk person would hand you your test, and the little desks and hard government chairs in the back were patrolled by a very stern FCC person who paced up and down the aisles and looked down at your notes and answer sheets. What Bash did was urge people to collect the questions and possible answers. To do that, people had to write things they remembered down as soon as they left the room. He, then, put them into the "Bash book," which was the question and the researched answer with nothing more. The promise was that if you read the book cover-to-cover 10 times (at the time, guys would put hash marks on the back), and had all the stuff fresh in your mind, the average guy could march into the field office and ace the test - whether they understood it or not.
The FCC would be in a fury over this and changed the tests frequently, the the government could not copyright its own material and there wasn't much more they could do. Bash kept up. Not only that, but he started to include little formula shortcuts and calculator tips on doing the polar to rectangular coordinates and j operators for the Extra. The pejorative at the time was being a "Bash Book extra." (You still had to pass the code and the test anyway.) Hey, what do they call the doctor who graduated at the bottom of his class? "Doctor."
People were doing that for FAA FARs and for the commercial radio licenses (Warren Weagant books), anyway.
So there was the shift from learning the materials to teaching to the test so simply being able to pass the test (kinda like we do to kids in school today). The ARRL continued to provide learning and understanding materials, though. Then Gordon West and the other VECs came into play later on in the mid-80s.
I bought an ARRL "Now You're Talking" book and cassette tape at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1976. It was pretty cool and written to a younger person's perspective. Great. I also had one of the Radio Shack books. But I'm fundamentally a big dummy, so I needed an in-person class to kick start me. My elmer had a ham radio storefront that sold used and reconditioned boat anchors. A magic place filled with Heathkits, Drakes, and Gonkulators. We sat in there, did the CW test from someone with a straight key (which was "The quick brown fox..." backwards, as it turned out), and took the novice written and put them into envelopes to the FCC. Eventually, in 1978, I became who I am today. I carpooled with a bunch of guys to a local high school the next year to take night courses to study for my general. I was already very active on CW in the Novice sub-bands and had my code speed up. Pearl Harbor Day, 1979, I took a bus into NYC, then a subway downtown and tested out for my general at Varrick St. in NYC. Then a year later, I did the same for my advanced and a week later, my extra.
So, that's how studying used to be. There are guys (our WWII era generation) who go back even further than that who may have had to draw circuit diagrams. Keep studying. We need your fresh blood in the hobby if we are ever going to justify the frequencies we've been given. There's no shortage of profiteers who want to take them away for pay-to-play broadband.
How bout them apples.
