English-Russian, Russian-English Dictionary

This is by far the best Russian dictionary available to American English speakers. In fact it's specifically geared towards American slang, spellings and idioms. Other dictionaries, while good in their own right, don't have these special focus. I brought mine to Russia and used it often.

Highly recommended.

As an ESL instructor, I find it important for my students to learn to use a dictionary. I have always recommended the Random House R-E/E-R Dictionary because of its price....it was a good deal. The Katzner dictionary is much better however, and Amazon's price is exceptional. The dictionary has easy to read references starting from either language ... which my Russian speaking students find indispensible. Non-Russian speakers, like myself, can even use the English section to look up Russian words.

I've read all the reviews here and I will aprroach mine by commenting on some of the negative remarks.
A few of the negatives were in regard to poor binding of the hardback edition. These are fair remarks, indeed my copy has worn very quickly as well. However, the softcover edition does not have this problem and it is also easier to transport around.
The other negatives seemed to be by advanced students of the Russian language. I would certainly expect a linguist to have some quibbles and also to have other books they would use and recommend (such as one reviewer's endorsement of the, indeed, outstanding Daum/Schenk Russian verb dictionary). But for most users this book will be outstanding. For American English speakers of Russian I would say it is a must.

Glued bindings are characteristic of most paperbound books nowadays, even outstanding dictionaries. Another reviewer complained about his Katzner dictionary falling apart because it wasn't sewn. I foresaw this possibility and sewed mine before subjecting it to use. You can do it yourself, or ask a tool-savvy friend. Clamp the book between two pieces of wood and drill with 3/32-inch drillbitt in four places, about 1/8th inch from the binding, about one inch from the ends, the two holes about 1/2 inch apart. Thread any heavy thread, waxed shoe-repair twine, or fishline, twice or more through each set of holes and tie securely with a square knot. Now you can open the book without fear of cracking the glued binding.

I have no argument with the content of this dictionary; it serves most of my needs. But I like to mark up my books and make notes in the margins; these help me remember things over the years. But after 1 1/2 years of use, this "perfect bound" dictionary is falling apart. It has no signatures, no threaded binding, so the pages that are merely glued in tend to fall out after repeated opening and closing of the book. This type of binding is acceptable on a short cheap paperback novel that you'll read one time, but on a thousand-page dictionary that you want to consult for years?! Language dictionaries are opened and closed thousands of times and must have the best of binding. This has the worst and all my notes are now lost for all practical purposes as I must change to a new intact dictionary. I'm sorry for Katzner, ... Not recommended.