Teach Yourself Russian Complete Course Package (Book + 2CDs) (TY: Complete Courses)

I bought this book in preparation for a trip to Russia. Years ago I studied Russian in high school and college. As a result, I was able to get into this program fairly easily. However, I would not recommend it to someone with no Russian experience -- it requires that you immediately start reading Russian sentences, and given that the language uses a totally different alphabet, that to me is an unreasonable jump.
My other comment is that the type is quite small and so those unfamiliar Russian letters are a bit more difficult to decipher than they could be.

This book is a great purchase and you should consider buying Beginner's Russian Script to go along with it. I've purchased Russian for Dummies but it doesn't have Russian written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Therefore I think that the Dummies book was a waste. Russian is a difficult language to learn but if you are considering learning it, you should definitely buy this book.

This book is accompanied by a CD with a voice recording of an Englishman speaking Russian rather than of an American speaking Russian. The speaker's vowel pronunciation is based on the English way of pronouncing vowels and can be clearly distinguished on the CD. For instance, when the speaker says a certain Russian sound is the same as the "a" sound in "father" that is not helpful to Americans who pronounce the "a" in "father" quite differently! Many other such examples are found in this CD. A recording made by an American would be more helpful to Americans.

Well organized, concise and well explained. Everything is taught in the context of conversational usage so it's easier to remember rather than just memorizing vocab and grammar by rote. Highly recommend.

The CDs are useful for hearing pronunciation but that's it... They are pretty short.

What I like about this book/CD set is that I can follow along in the book as I listen to the dialogue on the CDs. AND, they speak slowly enough that you can hear the words and repeat them (unlike some CDs or computer applications where native speakers are rattling tongue-twisting words off at the speed of light...). I am using this as I finish up a 10-week adult school class taught by a native Russian. This will help me get to where I want to be communicating in Russian.