English-Russian, Russian-English Dictionary

This is by far the best dictionary we have ever found. We have used at least a dozen different dictionaries. My wife teaches Russian langauage to American born children and a good dictionary is very important.

Ideal for translating everything from "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" to contemporary colloquial Russian.

Unlike other dictionaries, Katzner's identifies literary obsolete, colloquial, and even vulgar words thus sparing the student of potentially embarrassing moments. Knowing the difference between "kushats" and "zhrats" might make for a more pleasant dining experience or the Russian equivalent of "breast" and "bosom" a more accurate reading of Lermontov.

Katzner also lists separately the perfective verb in the Russian to English half, meaning if while reading a Russian text you stumble across an unfamiliar perfective verb you don't have to guess it's imperfective form to locate its meaning. Other dictionaries fail miserably on this point. He also identifies the required case of certain verbs.

As for binding issues, yes, your dictionary will eventually fall apart because you'll use it so much and in so many different places (classroom, cafe, office, home, etc..). I have plenty of other dictionaries all inferior and seldom used which remain in perfectly wonderful shape. :-)

This Russian language dictionary by Kenneth Katzner is the best and most comprehensive one I have been able to find.I have purchased several others only to be dissapointed but not with this one.

This dictionary is the best for American students because it's based on American English. Other dictionaries are based on British English (which means that they include some words American students don't use, and leave out some idiomatic expressions that American students do use). What I really like about this dictionary is as follows:
1) It gives lots of good examples
2) It includes a number of phrases along with the entry word
3) All the words in the English-Russian section can be found in the Russian-English section, and vice versa
4) It has every word you'll need to learn in your first 5 or 6 years of Russian (it even has English words I didn't know).
Although it's paperbound, by the time the book wears out, the student of Russian is advanced enough for a good Russian-Russian dictionary.

Great dictionary a lot of words and descriptions.
Weak side - an absence of transcriptions for English words.
Good choice to learn Russian for English speaking people but not vice versa.