What is the best brand of teach yourself books for the Russian language?
As a professional Russian teacher and a native speaker of Russian, I would recommend Beginer’s Russian by Rachel Farmer. The main goal of this course is to teach conversational everyday Russian. It is in no way a comprehensive Russian grammar book or university course in Russian, but it is a well put together book that will teach you how to read Cyrillic alphabet, converse on a number of basic conversational topics and cover some introductory grammar patterns. If you do not study with the Teacher, make sure to buy not only the book, but tapes or CDs as well. Here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/Teach-Yourself-Beginners-Russian-Audiopackage/dp/0071424628/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244561951&sr=8-2
The New Penguin Russian Course is praised by many, however it does not prove to be effective in practice. It has a lot of grammar rules and their explanation, but provides very little practice and exercises. In addition, it does not have any audio along with it, which makes self teaching of the language so much harder. Still, here is the link: http://www.amazon.com/New-Penguin-Russian-Course-Beginners/dp/0140120416/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_c