'Concise Guide To Jazz' teaches students to appreciate jazz, as well as detailing how jazz originated, how it is made, the major style eras, and the individual styles of 52 historic figures.
Its a good book to learn the history of Jazz and how modern music relates to it. I learned for instance, that Jazz can trace its linage to military brass bands from the Civil War. So it's literally a musical phenomena that has been going on for centuries.
But it is a tad boring at first for someone who is not particularly into music or already knows the history well.
In either case, its a good read and comes with its sound track of Jazz music.