Spanish Books Books

I purchased this book because it will help me to find the proper Spanish word for various items/things. I live in S. America for now and this book is a plus. It helps me to find the Spanish word for items which I may have a difficult time describing. The book is broken up into sections with easy to view pictures and accompanying Spanish/English terms. A definitely good purchase and I am glad I did it. I got the idea to purchase this book from someone in my office with the same book.

This is a very detailed dictionary - great for medical students or any other students. There are a lot of detailed translations of things I'm not sure I'll ever need to speak about, such as the space station, parts of a rocket, lots of insects, cuts of meat, construction vehicles, the solar system, etc. Very interesting for my 5 year old boy to look at and learn both English and Spanish words. I am a beginning Spanish student and, right now, this book is not very helpful to me. But it's great to look at.

On a scale of 1 to 5 I give this a 10! This dictionary is really great! It would be very good for ESL studies, or an English speaker learning Spanish. It reminds me of the Richard Scarry books I loved as a child. Even though it says pocket you would need a pretty big pocket, but, it is worth carrying around though. I also bought the full size version for home, and just gave the 5 language version to a niece still deciding what language to study. A+++++

I am a teacher of Spanish and own a number of visual dictionaries, including the Firefly Five Language Dictionary, the Firefly Spanish/English Dictionary and the DK Five Language Visual Dictionary. I prefer the Firefly dictionaries because they tactfully include the gender of words as a superscript after the word rather than as an indirect article, as in the DK dictionary. The latter has the ill-effect of creating ambiguous genders in instances where the indirect article is truncated:

For example: garlic - l'ail - der Knoblauch - el ajo - l'aglio

The size of this mini edition and hardened cardboard cover make it almost small enough to keep in your pocket, and easily transportable in a bag for trips or going back and forth to school or work. It is a very usable format for a visual dictionary, without substantially reducing the quantity or quality of the images. The smaller size does mean that the print smaller, but it is still very readable.

The full size, hardcover Spanish/English dictionary by Firefly does not contain any more information than this Mini edition, but the Firefly Five Language Dictionary contains almost twice as many pages. Given that the image layouts used in all of the firefly dictionaries are from a common master, the page count is a very good indication of the word count. Frankly, the quantity of the words in the mini is ample for even most advanced students of Spanish.

As with any visual dictionary, this one focuses on nouns. Students of the Spanish will still want to have a quality pocket bilingual dictionary like the Larousse:
Larousse Student Dictionary Spanish-English / English-Spanish (Larousse School Dictionary)

And a quality Spanish-only dictionary like the Dictionario Practico del Estudiante:
Diccionario Practico del Estudiante/ Student Dictionary

Four Hands is a wonderfully inventive novel: a political thriller of spies, hit men, terrorists, drug dealers, and assorted malefactors, all involved in the shadowy fringes of the history of two nations. Its tellers are Greg Simon and Julio Fernandez, investigative journalists who are chasing down an elaborate conspiracy plot. The story they discover and type out together weaves truth with lies, wild humor with tragedy, and reality with fantasy-a stranger-than-fiction tale of imperial excess where delusion makes perfect sense.

Four Hands

ANNOTATION
Stan Laurel, one of the heroes of Four Hands, wanders into Mexico and witnesses the assassination of Pancho Villa. There follow other episodes, centered on Greg, an American journalist, and Julio, his Mexican friend and collaborator. Taibo gives the reader a plethora of brilliant characters in this panoramic novel that moves backward and forward in time.

FROM THE PUBLISHER
St. Martin's Press is proud to publish the first English translation of a major literary novel by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, whose previous appearances in this country have been this leading Mexican author's crime novels. The "four hands" are those of two world-ranging journalists, one Mexican and one American. It is these two men who provide the initially improbable links between such disparate elements of Taibo's amazing novel as Stan Laurel's witnessing the assassination of Pancho Villa; the Disinformation Operation of an anonymous group in New York who approach their dingy office up a fire escape; the discovery of Leon Trotsky's notes for the crime novel he was writing when he was murdered in Mexico; the stupefying thesis proposals of graduate student Elena Jordan; an episode in the Contra war in Nicaragua; and the Spanish miner's takeover of a coal mine in the thirties. These themes and others, like the voices of a Bach fugue, appear and disappear and reappear, gradually weaving together into an intricate whole without losing their separate identities. Four Hands is a funny, dazzling, and exuberant work that only this author could have created.

FROM THE CRITICS
Publisher's Weekly
Two journalists-one Mexican, the other American-each tell the story of a plot to vilify the Nicaraguan Sandinistas in this complex tale that weaves together real and fictional characters including Pancho Villa, Stan Laurel and Harry Houdini. (July)

Library Journal
At times reminiscent of Doctorow's work, Four Hands is a glorious documentary-style novel, offbeat and usually comic. Taibo (Some Clouds, LJ 6/1/92) focuses on two 1980s journalists. Both partners and friends, Mexican Julio Fernndez and North American Greg Simon write about politics and revolution for the likes of Mother Jones and Rolling Stone. Interwoven with their stories are strands of fiction and fictionalized nonfiction that span the decades of the 20th century, roaming from the Americas to Europe and back. Other characters include Stan Laurel, Leon Trotsky, and civil engineer and anti-Sandinista Ben Linder. Taibo, who lives in Mexico City, is already well known to Spanish-language readers. This novel belongs in all strong contemporary literature collections.-Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, Ore.

BookList - Donna Seaman
Taibo is usually considered a crime writer due to such anarchistic detective novels as No Happy Ending , but even though espionage plays a role here, this hilariously disorienting tale is too slippery for a genre designation. The title refers to lucrative if frequently ludicrous partnerships, such as that of Laurel and Hardy (Stan Laurel plays a key role in this complicated narrative), and the collaboration of the novel's main characters, journalists Greg and Julio. Greg, Jewish and chronically alienated, is the photographer, while Julio, loquacious and sanguine, does most of the writing, although, four-handedly, they manage to crank out articles in both Spanish and English, doubling their earning potential. As they track down their latest story amid the chaos and fervor of Latin American politics, war, gun trading, and drug dealing, they inadvertently parallel Operation Snow White, the goofy, most likely pointless brainchild of a CIA operative named Alex. Taibo's cleverly fractured yet unmistakably pointed plot involves dwarfs both literal and figurative, Houdini, a long-lost manuscript of a mystery written by Trotsky, and wonderfully caustic musings on the cult of information. Taibo ranges all over the map, and we follow, curious and entertained.

Have you read a lot of mystery novels? Can you guess "whodunnit" before the final chapter? If so, try your wits against this book. Written from several different perspectives, bridging not only gaps in point of view but time and geography as well, this novel will make you want to bang your head into the wall. Taibo's work, however, is well worth the all the confusion, because once you have a vague idea of what is going on, the work's machinations are fascinating. While Four Hands can be read as an exercise in disinformation, in the creation of history, it can also be read as the construction of a mystery. In other words, reading this novel is like seeing the cogs turning in Agatha Christie's head. Taibo supplies all of the necessary ingredients for a good mystery novel: the killer, the victim, the mastermind, and of course, the detectives (Greg and Julian, two journalists). The construction of the mystery then proves more important than the mystery itself; the reader waits and waits for all of these ingredients to come together. The character of Alex, the crazy agent in charge of the intelligence agency "SD" ("It is not especially clear who maintains the SD either. One time someone suggested their paychecks came directly from the National Security Council"(11)) is Taibo's mad artist figure, pulling all of the mystery's factors together. Alex, however, tries to plan the outcome of this mystery, and so there is potentially no mystery at all, but just the manipulations of an intelligence agency. Can all mystery novels be seen as the result of such careful and meticulous calculation? Is there any such thing as the unknown anymore? Luckily, there are enough twists and turns in this complicated narrative to keep every reader happy. In fact, if you can keep up with what exactly is going on, then you deserve a gold medal. My advice is to just enjoy this "mystery-in-reverse" and to appreciate the kind of thought and energy that goes into creating traditional mystery novels.

Yummy. This book is a real treat for any person who can string together alot of facts, loves details from the four corners of the earth that all play into a plot, and intellectualism in their mystery. I have to admit there were some chapters about a play in some prision that I did not get at all. But what I did get was a huge grin on my face for three days while I slogged through this fun fun book. So many subplots. The CIA (sort of, with a great oberkonig character), revolutionary-chasing reporters (they love Che and pal around in El Salvador when they're not drunk), stressed out drug dealers, Leon Trotsky, and some old International Marxist Organization surviving through a bunch of octagenarians. Oh-- I forgot my favorite-- a PhD student in search of a thesis topic. All these characters come together in an odd tale. And the best thing--- the book has NO POINT. At least none that I could pick up. Don't read this if you need to have your Ts crossed by the time you're done. Personally, it was sheer joy to read this. The author and translator are clever and witty to an art form and I hope someday I have friends who can amuse me so.

Rather predictably, the first play offered here is "A Doll's House", the most famous of Ibsen's works. Strangely enough, this ended up NOT being my favorite of the four plays provided in this small collection, but I'll get to that in a moment. Next we have "Ghosts", "Hedda Gabler", and finally "The Master Builder".

"A Doll's House", 86 pages long, is also provided here with the alternate German ending. The ending was deemed so scandalous that Ibsen was forced to write up another ending, in which things go slightly differently. "A Doll's House", a play about a woman who rather does the unthinkable (in that time, at least) to help her husband and then once again to herself, is remarkably interesting. Ibsen plays are generally extremely fun to analyze, simply because there's always something there. Nobody would read dull plays, after all. The alternate ending provided is actually the most interesting part of all. It shows us what the impact of this play was on society at the time that it came out. Perhaps we find these things somewhat more "normal" (though they're actually not, and are still considered rather scandalous) and acceptable, so this ending really reminds us of WHY this play was so impressive and WHY Ibsen was such a strange character for his time. An intriguing play, though not my favorite.

No, that falls to "Ghosts". A play that once again touches on difficult subjects that are most intriguing, "Ghosts" chilled me from beginning to end. It was a more interesting play, overall, because it seemed to me more human. That's not to say that "A Doll's House" wasn't human (it definitely is), but there was something about "Ghosts" that touched me more than the other plays. At 73-pages and with fewer characters, "Ghosts" is an easier play to really read, and certainly an enjoyable one.

"Hedda Gabler" changes things a bit. The plot suddenly becomes a bit more interesting with a touch more mystery and intrigue. There are moments that positively creeped me out ("I'm burning your child") and moments where I just shivered. The ending is a bit more intense than in the previous plays, though less surprising. The play felt very different from "Ghosts" or "A Doll's House", though it was still clearly an Ibsen "morbid but interesting" play.

For me, "The Master Builder" is the odd play out. It's the one that, a. Bored me the most, b. Seemed to take the longest (though only barely longer than "A Doll's House, at 88 pages, and shorter than the 97-paged long "Hedda Gabler"), and c. Seemed the least realistic. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the ending wouldn't seem to work on stage. I felt like at some point Ibsen kind of forgot that he was writing a play and mentioned things that wouldn't really work (unless they have a complex blue screen, but those didn't exist in his time...). There are ways around it, certainly, and it's a minor flaw, but I found that "The Master Building" just didn't have that spark that the other plays seemed to have. No, it's not a BAD play, but it's not my favorite among these either.

While there are many options out there for buying Ibsen plays, this one is certainly a good buy. While the Signet edition also gives us four plays for a few dollars cheaper, instead of the incredible "Ghosts", we get the reasonable "The Wild Duck". For those few dollars, I'd opt for "Ghosts". Also, the book type itself is better in this edition as opposed to the Signet Classics one.

Highly recommended to anyone interesting in a good play to analyze and enjoy. Enjoy!

it was an older book, but it was in good shape. good plays too.

James McFarlane's and Jens Arup's translations of Ibsen have long been classics and are arguably the best. Although they were published in England almost forty years ago, they still sound remarkably fresh and will be in print for many years to come.

In "A Doll's House" (1879), Ibsen casts us into the world of Nora Helmer, a young Norwegian housewife and Nordic Madame Bovary. Highlighting the restricted position of women in male-dominated society, the play sparked such an uproar in Scandinavia when it appeared that "many a social invitation during that winter bore the words: 'You are requested not to mention Ibsen's Doll's House!'" In fact, Hedwig Niemann-Raabe, the actress who was to play Nora on tour in Germany, was so appalled at the ending of this play -- at this female "monster" -- that she demanded Ibsen write an alternative one in German, which he did (a "barbaric outrage", in his words). McFarlane has appended this German-language ending (and a translation in English).

Based on the theme, "The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children," "Ghosts" (1881) is one of Ibsen's most riveting plays. Like "A Doll's House", it, too, was denounced on its début ("crapulous stuff", "an open drain", one London reviewer called it -- certainly a Victorian exaggeration). As in most of his plays, Ibsen probes the hypocrisies of patriarchal society, which he deems to be rotten at its core, and stultifying provincial life ("Doesn't the sun ever shine here?"). Typically, he also casts women in a favorable light.

"A Doll's House" and "Ghosts" established Ibsen's reputation as one of the finest playwrights in Europe, but his next two plays -- "Hedda Gabler" (1890) and "The Master Builder" (1892) -- gave him undisputed international fame. As McFarlane points out, the 1890s "were the years when the publication of a new Ibsen play sent profound cultural reverberations throughout Europe and the world." "Hedda Gabler" marks Ibsen's shift away from highly controversial dramas primarily concerned with social and sexual injustice to "domestic" plays that addressed the struggle of individuals to control each other, people who "want to control the world, but cannot control [themselves]." "Hedda Gabler" is a thoroughly electrifying drama about a married woman's devouring sense of decay and confinement. "The Master Builder", which Ibsen coupled with "Hedda Gabler", is his riveting look into sexual potency and the domination of youth by age.

These plays are not as dark and dirty as they might seem. Whatever reviewers may have said about them when they came out and whatever gloomy stuff psychiatrists have written about them since, if you're at all familiar with prime-time television, they won't offend you -- in fact, you probably wont even lift an eyebrow. Still, I found myself glued to them for hours and I've read them before. Find a copy for your shelf!

Actually, I've only read two of these plays before but I did
want to list the names of the four included in this volume:

A Doll's House;
Ghosts;
Hedda Gabler;
The Master Builder.

Masterful social drama (to sound like a back-of-the-book blurb).
Seriously though, Ibsen's plays are wonderful.

One of the preeminent Goya scholars, Tomlinson expands her expertise to provide an exceptionally readable and stimulating survey of a period that has traditionally been neglected within art history. Besides her clear, informative prose, the book's outstanding production values make it truly user-friendly.

This is a very good, concise look at the painting in Spain from 1561-1828. Janis Tomlinson is very careful to point out the problems with the term "Spanish painting" and tries to go beyond this idea, and to discuss painting in Spain. She chooses to not discuss the Spanish born Jusepe Ribera (as he was mostly active in Italy) but does look at painters from France and Italy who worked in Spain. Tomlinson also tries to get away from stereotyped views of Spanish painting being only somber and religious. I liked how the history of Spain and of Europe was tied into the painting in Spain. The patrons of artists in Spain were also talked about, what they wanted and how they reacted to different artists. Many painters are discussed, even ones whose work is not often seen outside of Spain. The book is has lots of illustrations, not only of paintings but of places. There is also a handy map of Spain in the front of the book. The pictures are naturally on the small side, since this book is rather small, and the pictures rarely take up the whole page. Tomlinson is a good writer, the book is quite readable and enjoyable.

Well organized and beautifully composed reproductions make this book an indispensable guide and/or introduction to the artists working in Spain from 1561-1828. The historical and political/social context of their works is explored as well as the evolving artistic vison and techniques that were developing during this period. Major influences from Italy and elsewhere are sited. A very enjoyable and enlightening book.

This book, on my course syllabus for a course on Spanish art , was a great addition to my library. Tomlinson is a scholar dedicated to giving the pertinent information in the proper art historical format without tireless embellishment. More on artists like Ribera or Zurburan would have rounded out the book but in all it is an excellent source for students writing papers and art historians looking for valid interpretations of Spanish artistic merit without bias. It was refreshing to read a book and not have the art continually compared to Italian & French painters. Instead it offers the reader very important information with excellent images of the Spanish contribution to world of art. Brava.

I loved every essay in this book. Beautifully written. Insightful. Entertaining. Thought provoking. Brilliant but never pretentious.

The book was delivered before the estimated delivery date. The book was in the stated condition- good.

In Grammar Lessons, Michele Morano takes the reader on an unforgettable journey, a treat to the senses. She invites us to explore her thoughts and feelings as she experiences daily life in Spain in the early 1990's, while teaching English at the University of Oviedo for a year. While in Oviedo, she enrolled in a Spanish language course for foreigners or "extranjeros."

In thirteen personal essays, Morano captures the reader's heart with her descriptive and poetic style. Her themes evoke a feeling of familiarity, for her stories are organized around topics such as food, travel, and solitude versus loneliness. "I'm hungry in both body and spirit," she writes. "I crave not just a meal, not just the take-out supper I can carry to the emptiness of my room, but a complete dining experience." One pressing issue during the year in Spain was her longing for the man she left behind in New York.

Morano prefaces her book by explaining that grammar is not simply words strung together to form sentences, but the mannerisms, gestures, and ways of life that accompany language. The book is organized into three parts. The essays in Part One reveal her struggle to learn the Spanish language while living the culture. The essays in Part Two revolve around her later trips to Spain. Part Three reflects her attitude toward travel along highways and how it shapes the individual. Morano's sentiments about travel and saying farewell to relationships are reflected in these lines:

"If you move about in the world, if you live fully and fall in love--with friends, acquaintances, and places and periods of time, your heart is going to break again and again. Each time you say good-bye, you'll feel the ache of impermanence, of inevitability, of your own finite days."

I connected with this book because I would have benefitted greatly from studying in foreign lands while I was studying Spanish as my college major. However, overseas travel and study programs were not as prevalent in the late 70's or early 80's as they are now. I have since made many excursions to Mexico and Spain, although at this point in my life I live vicariously as an eager armchair traveler. I comfortably travel to many faraway places through others' spoken and written accounts.

As I read Grammar Lessons, Morano took me on a vivid tour of her daily discoveries of cultural life and relationships in Spain. The pages held me spellbound, and I wished the journey did not have to end.

by Sharon Blumberg
for Story Circle Book Reviews
www.storycirclebookreviewsorg
reviewing books by, for, and about women

Not since Tobias Wolffe's This Boy's Life have I been so moved by a work of nonfiction. Ms. Morano's economical prose, keenly observed detail and emotional honesty are a triple-threat. The essays work that magic of translating what your imagination conjures into an experience which you feel is now a genuine memory, something about which you and she have secret and sacred understanding. Everyone who has had their heart broken by their crazy boyfriend while travelling through Spain should read this book, and then everyone else should too, because after a glass of madeira or a cup of cafe con leche your mind might trick you into reminiscing about that year in Spain when your crazy boyfriend ...

I really enjoyed this story set in Northern New Mexico! It's a wonderful remembrance of the author's grandparents, which we personally knew. The story gives an additional dimension of life to your family. I remember Cindy and Gary (the author) when they were young and it's nice that now there's the great grandkids that will have fond memories of their great-grandparents, their guardian angels as well. Tell
Gary that we really enjoyed his story and look forward to more!

I really enjoyed reading this book! It was a great story and the ending was happy and it left me choked up. This story hit close to home and I highly recommend this book!

This author did an excellent job. It is a very well written book as he captured the traditions and beliefs of the Northern New Mexico communities. He created suspense, anticipation, and a yearning to learn more about the New Mexico folklore. I am looking forward to a followup from this author where he continues to unravel the many mysteries that lay in the Northern Mountains of New Mexico, and extends to other parts of the State as well.

This book was well written makes the characters come to live. Hope to see more from this author

The service from Amazon was excellent and the book is exactly what I was needing.

I will send my comments about this book en both languages: English and Spanish. This is and advantages: Amazon now is offering to customers a new Service: books in Spanish.

Now my comments in Spanish. In another mail will send the translation..

La Gerencia de Proyectos ha tomado un gran auge en el mundo moderno. Todas las empresas, sin distingo de su tamaño, nicho de negocio o Volumen de Ventas deben prestar mucha atención al desarrollo de sus Proyectos. En los buenos resultados de los mismos está la clave del éxito de su gestión empresarial.

El PMBOK enseña al interesado las `Mejores Prácticas' que debe implementar para el desarrollo armónico de sus iniciativas estratégicas. Los procesos de iniciación, planeación, ejecución, monitoreo y control, y el cierre desfilan por sus páginas y llevan al estudiante a comprender el porqué de las nueve Áreas de Conocimiento: Integración, Alcance, Tiempo, Costos, Calidad, Recurso Humano, Comunicaciones, Riesgo y Adquisiciones.

El Gerente de Proyecto debe trazarse un plan de estudio y establecer en el mismo metas de aprendizaje. Su dedicación al mismo será recompensada y su desempeño en el trabajo será mejor cada día: podrá brindar excelentes soluciones a sus usuarios y conseguirá anhelada Satisfacción de sus clientes. No vacile en adquirirlo y aprender en el mismo.

Best Regards,

Germán Bernate
Gerente de Proyectos

Para alguien que quiera tomar en serio la administracion de proyectos es necesario tener este libro. Es el camino a la certificacion como PMP

Now I've finally received the books I had requested, both are good.

Thanks.

If you're looking for a reference book that will allow one to write the perfect letter in Spanish, then this 94-page book is for you. Author Mary H. Jackson does an excellent job of providing examples of letters written for personal and business purposes. This book, which is published by the great reference staff at Passport Books, is an inexpensive and useful guide to allow anyone to write letters in Spanish with little or no help at all. Of course, it would be helpful to have knowledge of the Spanish language before writing any letter, however if you're a student or someone who communicates infrequently with a pen pal, friend, or anyone else in Spanish, this book will allow you in your letter writing.

The book's compact size and price are extra reasons to purchase it. I also recommend "Cassell's Colloquial Spanish: A Handbook of Idiomatic Usage" if you want to improve your grammatical knowledge of Spanish. "Cassell's Colloquial Spanish" is the best book on Spanish grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure on the market, and addition with the "Guide to Correspondence in Spanish," I can guarantee that you will be writing like a professional is a matter of time.

"Guide to Correspondence in Spanish / Guia de correspondencia espanola" is a very up-to-date and useful guide for writing all kinds of letters in Spanish. While the title suggests that the book might be completely bilingual, the book is written entirely in Spanish. There is a bilingual glossary included, but the text itself is not translated to English. This book can be used by anyone with a good knowledge of written Spanish. It provides the fine points of etiquette and proper format for writing both business and personal letters. Best of all, the book includes many sample letters and lists of useful phrases and abbreviations. Each chapter includes practice exercises which make the book potentially useful as a text book

This book is a great reference guide to writing business correspondence in Spanish. It provides example letters that can be used in developing correspondence which recognizes the cultural differences in the style and structure between letters written in Spanish and English. This book has been very useful in my work of responding to customer billing disputes.

If you're looking for a reference book that will allow one to write the perfect letter in Spanish, then this 94-page book is for you. Author Mary H. Jackson does an excellent job of providing examples of letters written for personal and business purposes. This book, which is published by the great reference staff at Passport Books, is an inexpensive and useful guide to allow anyone to write letters in Spanish with little or no help at all. Of course, it would be helpful to have knowledge of the Spanish language before writing any letter, however if you're a student or someone who communicates infrequently with a pen pal, friend, or anyone else in Spanish, this book will allow you in your letter writing.

The book's compact size and price are extra reasons to purchase it. I also recommend "Cassell's Colloquial Spanish: A Handbook of Idiomatic Usage" if you want to improve your grammatical knowledge of Spanish. "Cassell's Colloquial Spanish" is the best book on Spanish grammar, vocabulary, and sentence structure on the market, and addition with the "Guide to Correspondence in Spanish," I can guarantee that you will be writing like a professional is a matter of time.

Hugo's does what many other self-study language programs don't. It builds up your basics with simple nouns before moving on to basic sentences and verbs, then verb conjugation. Instead of memorizing phrases, you're given the bits of speech so you learn the actual rules of the language, rather than parrot back simple phrases. This helps you to actually communicate, and your command of the language improves quickly. The cassettes are helpful in that you actually hear pronunciation by native speakers, but they are by no means necessary. I rarely use them except when I hit a lesson I need more help on, and aural study does help in this way. In the back is a Spanish-English/English-Spanish dictionary (my beef with this was it doesn't contain nearly enough words other than ones commonly used in this course). Therefore, I recommend buying a nice thick Spanish/English dictionary in addition.

If you can't afford the time or money for a class, Hugo's is definitely one of the best alternatives I've found. In addition, however, I'd recommend "Cliffs QuickReview: Spanish 1". What bothered me about Hugo's is, while it does a great job of explaining the basics/intermediate things about Spanish, it glosses over little things that a newbie wouldn't understand (ex: "Why do I put an accent here but not here?"). Cliffs QuickReview is a great reference for every tiny bit that Hugo's sometimes forgets to mention (and all organized nicely for easy reference ... as Hugo's is organized in lesson plans, it's not easy to find that one thing you want to review i.e. irregular verbs or BOTH past tenses).

In conclusion, Hugo's is the best I've found so far, and in two months' time I've definitely noticed an improvement in my Spanish. Just get Cliffs QuickReview and a Spanish dictionary to supplement Hugo's and you're set.

It really works!

This is a good course, but you should know that there is no English on the tapes. So you have to sit down in front of the tape deck with the book in hand. That is the down side for me. I was looking for a way to learn Spanish during my daily commute - check out Pimsleur Quick and Simple Spanish. That being said what I have come to recognize from simply listening and repeating the phrases and words is that it's also nice to be able to look at how the word is spelled. So I'm glad I have both.

I have previewed many books designed to teach spanish. This is the best I have seen yet. It is sequential in teaching grammar skills, in a simplified manner. It also, uses repetition to teach you the words. There are self tests at the back of each chapter. I take and re-take the tests, until I get them %100 correct. Then I review them over the course of the next several lessons. It is self-paced, and appears to be very comprehensive. Within the first couple of lessons, I was able to use my new grammar and word skills in conversations with people who only speak spanish. I have rechecked this book and tape from the library 3 times. I have decided I must purchase it to have my own copy.

Heaven help the hapless traveler who wanders off to Mexico without this enormously helpful book. I thought I knew Mexican food until I used the Hungry Travelers- Mexico. What a resource!

Whether you don't know a tamale from an enchilada or if you want to better understand regional nuances of Mexican cuisine, this handbook is for anyone smitten by Mexican food. The author has done a superb job of research and the prose flows like caramel on flan. A definite must read before your next trip to Mexico.

As fun to read as it is accurate, packable and irreplaceable, The Hungry Traveler for Mexico is the right book for anyone who enjoys eatings as much as traveling. The book is as much an appetizer for travel as for dining; I wasn't sure whether I was salivating more over the descriptions of the food or the thought of being in a place where I could eat such things. Forget your Spanish-English dictionary (it doesn't have important food terms anyway), and tuck this delicious little culinary guide into your pocket. The pronunciation guide is extensive and exact, and Marita Adair not only knows food, she knows Mexico and she knows travelers. It's as if you've found a good friend to eat out with--she won't lead you astray. You'll eat well using this book, you'll learn the nuances of dining in Mexico, and you'll find the way to the heart of the country.

This wonderful book is written by someone who obviously knows both the country and its food-everywhere. It's amazing that so much food information could be packed in a book that fits in my pocket. This little jewel is essential for traveling in Mexico whether you think you know the food or know for sure that you don't.