Rating: 
Summary: Another incredible value from Dover
Review: I love Dover's various works of classic literature available at a fraction of what you would expect to pay. Here, in this short volume, is another category offering a great value ... foreign language study. This is certainly anoher unbelievable value. Dollar for dollar, you can't go wrong with this book. The words are listed with an English definition followed by the use of the word in a sentence in Spanish. You need, perhaps, only a very rudimentary knowledge of Spanish to find this book useful. I am using this book to build my vocabulary and the use of each word in a sentence helps me to put the definition in it's proper context. I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: A Spanish Rosetta Stone ...
Review: I love this little book first of all because it's easy to carry around so I usually have it with me. It's perfect for a beginning spanish student since each word is used in a sentence. Not only do you learn the meaning of the word but you learn enough grammar to use it. The example sentences are in different tenses so can you learn some of that as well. Overall a great linguistic bang for the buck, its no nonsense format is pure Spanish extract for the novice.
Rating: 
Summary: Make sure you need it before you buy it.
Review: If you've taken more than one semester of Spanish in school, this book won't be able to help you much. For me (my wife is Mexican and I have learned a lot from her. I have also completed up through Spanish 201 in college), this book did not teach me a thing. However, for my grandma who has no experience with Spanish and wanted to learn some voculary words in order to communicate easier, this book was perfect. This book could be one of the most useful you have or one of the most useless, depending on who you are and at what level of Spanish you are at. Make sure that you need it before you buy it, but for two bucks you can't do much better if you are looking for a good vocaulary list.
Rating:
Summary: Useful indeed.
Review: Imagine what you could do if you knew 1001 spanish words. Not much you say? Well what if you knew not just any 1001 Spanish words but the 1001 most useful Spanish words! Now you are on your way to conducting the most fascinating conversations of your lifetime. Imagine if you were hanging out in some diner and you saw Shakira walk in...wow! Without this book you wouldn't be able to ask her "Where is the bathroom?" or "How many shoes do you have?" You'd be stuck with your jaw drooping in your eggs wishing you had read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good little vocabulary-builder for intermediate student
Review: It's appropriate to judge a book's success based on how well it fulfills its intended goals. If I write a book on modern popular music, for example, I would not expect it to be disparaged if it insufficiently covers medieval architecture or Roman medical advances.
This analogy comes to mind when thinking about this book. At first, I was myself tempted to dismiss the book. On the negative side, each word has only one sentence, and there's no English-to-Spanish section. What good is that?
Other reviewers have taken this tack. A book with 1000 words isn't going to be useful if you know much more than 1000 words. And a book with no pronunciation guide is not going to be very useful for beginngers.
On the other hand, the clear purpose of this book is one that I feel it does quite well: it's for the intermediate student (like me) and shows you which words to concentrate on learning. In other words, it helps me build my working useful vocabulary. I have several dictionaries: the problem for me is to know which words out of the 80,000 to concentrate on learning and which to ignore.
In some cases, you can look at the English and take a guess: the word meaning "talk" is likely to be very useful and "disambiguate" less so. Again, though, it's that middle category I want to know about: the ones that are useful even though, not having made a serious study of word usage, they don't seem so to me. And that's where the book really shines. It's a handy list of those words.
Its small size is also a plus. I carry it around with me and look at it from time to time when I have a free second.
In summary, this is a good little book that will help the intermediate student build his working vocabulary. It's not perfect, but it's a decent little book to have around.
Rating:
Summary: $1.95?? Are you KIDDING me?
Review: Okay, I thought that $1.95 was a misprint, and I bought it just to get a bargain. But omigod, talk about a bargain! At ten times the price, this book would be a bargain. It's not going to teach you to speak Spanish. It's not going to help you conjugate Spanish verbs. It's not going to make you fluent or able to read the newspaper in Zihuatenejo. But know what? It's going to make your next foray into a Spanish-speaking country a whole lot easier.
Overall, it's a dictionary, but there are subsections like food, colors, travel, clothing, and within those sections things are arranged alphabetically. Each word is used in a whole sentence (many of which are very handy sentences to have at your disposable) with translation, of course.
Anyway, stop reading this review and buy this book. Hell, at this price, buy 10 and give them to everyone in your family the next time you go south of the border.
Highest recommendation, and an utter steal at this price.
Rating:
Summary: If you speak pretty good spanish it will be a big help
Review: Seymour don't get too upset with feedback from your customers. The book is excellent, for people that are NOT first year spanish students. I have had a couple yrs of spanish in school and have spoken the language with many people from different countries. To make the book perfect , you should alphabetize in English.
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Summary: Simple
Review: Simple, straightforward. All you need! Even though some phrases are very strange...!
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Summary: Useful on a small scale
Review: This book has about 50 pages of dictionary, followed by word lists by category (such as the family, days, months, numbers, colors, foods, and animals, among others), and finally a page of "vocabulary tips," which are things like "English -ous is often Spanish -oso."One major disadvantage of this book is that the dictionary section is Spanish-English and there is no English-Spanish section. Obviously, with only a little over a thousand words, the book is not meant to be an exhaustive dictionary, and it does not really function as one. I was surprised at how useful I found one part of the book- the list of foods (Spanish-English, like the dictionary section). There were many words on this list that I did not know but felt I should, such as "almond" and "celery." I went through the dictionary section and found that each page (with about 22 words) had an average of 4 words I didn't know. (To give background on my Spanish knowledge, I have taken 4 years of high school Spanish, plus a lot of reading and studying in my spare time). I happily highlighted those words and began studying them, since they are, as the title claims, very useful. I think that this book might be most helpful for someone who has taken around 2 years of high school Spanish, as that person would know far fewer of the words. On the other hand, it might be an overwhelming amount to memorize, so maybe not. Here is an example entry taken from the book (I think this falls under fair use...):
"arrojar to throw Se prohibe arrojar objetos por la ventanilla. It is forbidden to throw things out of the window." At times the entry will also specify that the word is used in a certain country or region, which is very helpful considering the variation in the language in different Spanish-speaking countries. All in all, a useful little book, and a good resource for learning Spanish. Its scope is small, but it achieves what it aims for very well.
Rating:
Summary: Useful on a small scale
Review: This book has about 50 pages of dictionary, followed by word lists by category (such as the family, days, months, numbers, colors, foods, and animals, among others), and finally a page of "vocabulary tips," which are things like "English -ous is often Spanish -oso." One major disadvantage of this book is that the dictionary section is Spanish-English and there is no English-Spanish section. Obviously, with only a little over a thousand words, the book is not meant to be an exhaustive dictionary, and it does not really function as one. I was surprised at how useful I found one part of the book- the list of foods (Spanish-English, like the dictionary section). There were many words on this list that I did not know but felt I should, such as "almond" and "celery." I went through the dictionary section and found that each page (with about 22 words) had an average of 4 words I didn't know. (To give background on my Spanish knowledge, I have taken 4 years of high school Spanish, plus a lot of reading and studying in my spare time). I happily highlighted those words and began studying them, since they are, as the title claims, very useful. I think that this book might be most helpful for someone who has taken around 2 years of high school Spanish, as that person would know far fewer of the words. On the other hand, it might be an overwhelming amount to memorize, so maybe not. Here is an example entry taken from the book (I think this falls under fair use...):
"arrojar to throw Se prohibe arrojar objetos por la ventanilla. It is forbidden to throw things out of the window." At times the entry will also specify that the word is used in a certain country or region, which is very helpful considering the variation in the language in different Spanish-speaking countries. All in all, a useful little book, and a good resource for learning Spanish. Its scope is small, but it achieves what it aims for very well.
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