I found both this book, and the Level Two edition (called Intermediate on amazon) to be very good. I lived in Russia for about 6 monthes, and before and after this I used these books to self-study Russian. I tried a number of other books, both easier and harder, and found this one worked the best for me. It is a good mix of vocubulary, grammer, and a holistic approach to Russian which I enjoyed. It is easier than the college textbooks I worked with, and provides more stand-alone exercises to drill in the material. With the more advanced textbooks I tried, they provided too many rules too quickly and not enough drills to force you to memorize them. In a classroom environment this might be ok, but for me this approach worked much better. The book is geared to a young audience, probably mostly high school students, but not annoyingly so. You can also get tapes with both books. These are a bit pricey, but useful for doing the listening and pronunciation drills.

This is a good book for beginners. It seems to be aimed toward a younger audience, but it's still good for adults. The book focuses on the overall language itself, not just vocabulary or grammar.