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Rating: 
Summary: Not as good as Cortina's German or French books
Review: Cortina can be hit or miss. The German, French, Italian and Spanish books have superb (albeit a bit outdated in some cases) lessons for beginners, whereas the Greek, Brazilian Portugese and Russian books are simply lists of examples that are clearly designed to be used with tapes. This one gets three stars for the grammar section alone, which is a superb reference - but unless you've got the tapes, which cost a fortune, the 20 lessons are of EXTREMELY limited value to a beginner. I advise beginners to buy the book anyway just for the grammar reference, but they should try to get their foundation in the language from another source.
Rating: 
Summary: Not pretty, but great for teaching
Review: I probably would have given this book four stars, but I felt the need to make up for the previous reviewer's one star. This really IS a good book - The type is a little bit hard to read but if one is familiar with the Cyrillic letters it will not be hard. I'm sure with reading glasses you'd have no trouble. This book basically teaches in several ways. It has a dialog or conversation at the beginning of each lesson, and gives the English translation. Then, it has "Exercises," where an example is given of a type of sentence and then more sentences are given in just Russian. These are done at an easy pace, so it not hard to understand them. Finally, for the last third of the book there is a grammar reference, which is VERY helpful - The lessons have footnotes pointing to these grammar notes. All in all, this book is fairly, well, textual (not many pictures!), but if you're commited to learning more than just "traveler's" Russian, definitely check out this book!
Rating:
Summary: Great examples, good grammar appendix, nice line drawings
Review: Perhaps the print seems spartan, but the examples in this book are great and so numerous. I especially like the grammar section in the back. You can find numerous stock phrases that can be memorized for various conversations you may anticipate: e.g the section on prepositions "po" and "v" alone has instantly useable examples (pp 302-303) 'po ponedelnikam' 'on Mondays' 'v vremya voini' 'during the war' 'vo vremya' 'on time' 'po moemy mneniyu' 'in my opinion' 'v ety noch' 'on that night' 'v etom sluchae' 'in this case' These are just a few of them I thought off the top of my head. The line drawings seem dull but on closer observation they are authentic if minimalist views of Soviet/Russian life which test your knowledge of the culture. Check out the equestrian statue of Peter the Great (p. 31) Can you recognize the line to Lenin's Tomb? (p. 192) The spire of one of the Stalin-era skyscrapers of Moscow State University? (p. 135) The mezzanine of the Gosudarstvennii Universalnii Magazin (p. 140) Before I go to a party with Russian friends I memorize various phrases. My knowledge of the language has noticeably improved. For around $10 this volume is a bargain!
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