i couldn't say that you will "learn german" from reading this, meaning that you'll speak like a native...but it is quite the handy reference. for anyone who's studied german for more than a few minutes, you know it can be a bit tricky in places... this book helps distill the difficult parts into easi(ER)-to-understand charts, examples, etc.

I found this book a great starting point for learning German. I am learning the language for the fun of it, and this book is great for beginners. It covers all the basics thoroughly, but quickly, and proceeds on to more complicated subjects in grammar clearly and in a logical order. There are lots of tables, which I find very helpful in sorting new information. It also distinguishes all English text in black ink and German in red ink, also very helpful. So many books seem to jam a ton of information into a book in no particular order, basing chapters on real life situations. I found this frustrating because I wanted to learn WHY and HOW a sentence is structured, not just how to say popular phrases. I would definitely recommend this book for serious beginners.

This book is an amusing collection of German slang and is in this way a superior, though different, book from Strutz's "German Idioms," published by Barron's. "German Slang" contains some slightly racy, street-wise German that's sure to amuse almost everyone. Some of it, of course, can be offensive. German teachers should look up "Sprachmufti"--a definition I wound up memorizing--"Er haelt sich fuer Sprachmufti [language expert], die Jugendsprache aber checkt er nicht [doesn't understand]."

I believe many people heard of the Nuremberg Trial, but I doubt many people know much of the details of the Trial. Nor the debate about the Trial ensued for decades after the Trial. Frankly I have to admit that I myself did not have any idea of it until recently when this book happened to cross me. I wish people read this book with an open-mind. And I wish this still be a country where free speech still prevails. I highly recommend this important book which should not escape the sight of any history-lover and professional historians. The power and merit of this book rest on the brave challenge, the sharp criticism on the sensitive subject--the Nuremberg Trial--that have made by those four hundred leading personalities in the military, law, arts, diplomacy, philosophy, history and religion all around the world (on Allied side) who were armed with richly embroidered knowledge of international law and equipped with the historical truth according to their own experience in the Second World War.

The main points of their challenge and criticism lay in the followings:

First, the Trial was a gross travesty on justice and illegal as far as international law concerned, because, in the first place, 'according to the principles of international law universally recognized up to 1945 and explicitly admitted by the Allied and Associated Powers after the First World War, the Allies had no jurisdiction over the citizens of anther sovereign state for acts done in the service of that state'. In the second place, the law on the Trial was based on ex post facto law. They argued that that the definition of the crime and its punishment were fixed only after commission of the acts imputed alone radically has contravened the ancient principle of jurisprudence: 'Nulla poena sine lege, nullum crimen sine lege.'('No punishment without a law, no crime without a law.'); that the Resolution On Human Rights of the League of Nations was founded on this basic principle, which Article 11 of this resolution states: 'No one may be punished for an act if at the time of this act a punishment for it was not pre-established in international law or in the laws of the county concerned.' In the third place, the trial violated one of the basic principles of law that 'he who judges in his own case is not only a suspect and therefore a challengeable judge; he is simply not a judge. If he sits as judge, the illegality of the process and the nullity of the sentence are absolute and incurable'. In the forth place, the Charter of the Tribunal abolished the rules of evidence which in every civilized country have been introduced for the protection of accused persons against prejudiced and unreliable assertions.

Second, the Trial was unfair in the sense of fairness, because if it was really for trial war criminals, it should put all the war criminals of both sides before justice not only Germans. They even argued that as for crimes against humanity, those governments which ordered the destruction of German cities, thereby destroying irreplaceable cultural values and making burning torches out of women and children should also have stood before the bar of justice. Some opinions are even so bold and so sharp as it is stated that there is no doubt that in ordering the destruction of large enemy cities, which represented an important part of the very basis of European culture and civilization, the Allied political leaders have incurred a dire responsibility before the bar of history.

Third, the Trial was dangerous in military sense, because putting military personals on trial and death just because of obedience destroyed the basic principles of discipline and made any national defense impossible and in chaos. They argued how in the name of common sense a military officer could wage any kind of war except an aggressive one without being a traitor to his country, that everyone took an oath when he entered the U.S. Navy to defend the United States against all enemies---and there was not anything said about doing it in a non-aggressive manner, that after Nuremberg Trial practice, maybe we should add a proviso to the oath saying, 'Before carrying out the orders of my superior officers, I will check to insure that they are compatible with our international commitments, the Charter of the United Nations, etc.'

In short, according to their opinion, the Trial is illegal and unjust, the Trial is just a revenge, a lynch like ancient time, merely victors revenging their vanquished.

Another contents of the book is the deep sympathy and touching apology towards Germans including those dead sentenced by the Trial expressed by those leading personals. For instance, Royal Naval Admiral Sir Barry Domvile states: 'Anybody who was a victim of the iniquitous Nuremberg Trials has my deep sympathy.' Once US Army Colonel and President Judge of Pennsylvania Honorable Edward Leroy von Roden wrote: 'This country owes to Grand Admiral Doenitz and to many other men at the least a humble apology for what we have caused them to suffer...Let us hope that Admiral Doenitz and other enemy patriots will be aware of the fact that there are great numbers of loyal Americans who are ashamed of the behavior of those in our government who were responsible for what was done.'

If you're learning German, this is a good book to have with you, anytime you have some dead time -- waiting for a plane, waiting in a doctor's or dentist's office. Waiting for Godot. You'll eventually make your way through the conjugations of over 300 German verbs, from "achten" to "zwingen."

This is a good overview of most of the irregular verbs (and a couple of regular) you'll encounter, but as the reviewer from Zurich says, some verbs are apparently missed out.

I think the biggest danger with this is that any beginner looking at it may become "blinded by science". There's just so much here, some of it you'll rarely if ever need, so it can be daunting if you're just starting out. It's not a book for learning the verbs in my view, but a book for seeing you've got the verbs you know right (and cheating on Hausaufgabe)... if you want to learn German verbs try a workbook. You want to be a little bit ahead with your German before you start with this!!!

I see this in the same way I see my bigger German dictionary... it's useful at home for reference, but you're not going to carry it about with you! I've an idea that there's a smaller and/or larger edition of this same book, although Amazon doesn't list it, you should check that out before you buy.

I believe that any learner of the German language should also own this book. This is one of the most helpful German verb books out there. As you can probably tell from the title, the book shows 501 German verbs fully conjugated.

So, why should you buy this book? Any learner of the German language will definitely gain something from this book. Because it shows all of the conjugations of the German language, it is a good reference book as well as a good book for learning. I use this book to help with my German homework or if I'm writing something and I forget if a certain tense is irregular for a verb. I can just flip to the page of the verb in question and I can see the entire verb fully conjugated. I just look and see how the verb is conjugated in the tense I'm using. It is also great for finding out past participles because they cannot always be guessed simply by looking at the verb.

Some added features besides the fully conjugated 501 verbs is the great section in the front which explains how and when the verb tenses are used in German. It also gives the English equivalent for added reference. I use this section to learn more German verb tenses and also as a reference to make sure I used the right tense in the right case. Additionally, the book has some grammer exercises in the back and on each verb page, it has sentences at the bottom using the verb so that you can see common examples for when it would be used.

The bottom line is if you are taking a German class in school or self-studying, you should get this book. It helps greatly in learning German verb tenses and it is a great reference book for if you are unsure of a certain tense for a verb or if you want to review when a verb is used. It is clean and organized, there is an entire page devoted to each verb and each page is set up exactly the same so that you can quickly find the verb tense you are looking for no matter which verb page you are on. I highly suggest buying this book.

Just how many verbs are you going to use in class? This is an excellent reference and as a side benefits it helps with an understanding of English with the Tenses and moods in German and English equivalents. It is written in a form that you can recite the tenses in you mind before speaking.

Your next purchase for class should be The Oxford-Duden Pictorial German-English Dictionary ISBN: 0198645023

If you study slang of the world, patterns arise. Whereas American slang has some patterns of onomatopoeia, and British slang favours rhymes, one learns through this book that French slang often flips words backwards, uses American slang with French intonations, and equates genitals with fruit. "Street French," as Strutz calls it, is unabashed as slang is anywhere else, and if you never thought so, think again.

Unless one reads at least intermediate-level French, this pocket-sized _Dictionary of French Slang and Colloquial Expressions_ will prove useful only as a reference book, not as a guidebook for the traveler. It is a one-way dictionary in French-English, and many of the French entries are not defined but are cross-referenced to another entry. Thus, a few thousand French slang words and colloquialisms are represented but not all are defined. (For example, "crêpe." See "rétourner...crêpe.") As well, some of these French words are in common usage, and I would not consider them to be "true" slang or colloquial expressions because they can be found in _Larousse de Poche_ or _Larousse Dictionnaire Compact_. (For example, "cravate," "conduite," "pareil.")

The preface to this small dictionary is quite excellent. One will find there explanations for "javanais," "largonji," "louchébem," "mézigue," and "verlan." Thus, I recommend this book for as a good reference for online chatting because one will encounter French people who are logging on from Lyon and Marseille as well as Paris.

For travel to France, I would recommend, at minimum: Rick Steves, Berlitz, or Lonely Planet phrasebooks; a Larousse pocket dictionary; Michelin the Red Guide France 2001; and a book of idiomatic usage and slang, such as "Merde!," "Street French Slang Dictionary & Thesaurus," or "Street French 3."

Recommended for collectors of slang and humor dictionaries!

I'll be the first to admit that French is my secondary language. But what was the deal: I who have read Molière in the original, who correspond with actual Frenchmen in their language (without-I might boast-sounding like a dolt), and who reads ParisMatch with no problem was staring at the sentences on AOL's French Chat as if they were...well...written in a foreign language. "Es-tu MEC?" Am I a Mec. What the heck is a mec? My very good French English dictionary was very bad at helping me comprehending the more trendy words. So I was left scrambling to get my hands on a very good dictionary of French Slang dictionary. This book is it. The dictionary begins with a quasi-scholarly assessment of slang then moves on to a standard A to Zed listings of French slang words. Each word is given with a "dictionary" definition and its slang renderings are given in the examples sentences. These example sentences, by the way, are excellent. They are not the namby-pamby sentences of first-year text books. Instead they have a very "real life" feel to them giving a sense on how to employ the slang word in original speech or writing. That said, there are several considerations about the dictionary worth mentioning. First it is a one-way dictionary. (French-English only). So that you can look up a slang word you've encountered, but you're stuck rendering "She puked her guts out" as "Elle a beaucoup vomi" until you happen across the French slangs equivalents. Secondly, there is no pronunciation guide at all. The book assumes you can pronounce never-seen-before words. Finally, this is not one for the kiddies. As a good deal of slang revolves around sexual concepts so does a good portion of dictionary deal with "dirty" words. These words cover the gambit from crude, risqué, to down right vulgarities. This book is a good first step if you want to move beyond a textbook vocabulary. And PLEASE have at least textbook vocabulary to begin with. Slang is slippery enough in one's own language. To memorize slang expressions without a broader understanding of French as a whole could have you sounding like a misplaced hippy or worse... like Pauley Shore.

I bought this book to supplement a college course in German and found it helpful in this regard. I'm not sure if it is sufficiently thorough for people not taking courses in German.

Not really geared to the beginner, this book is handy for someone trying to get back into the German language from an absence of some time. The one drawback is that there sometimes isn't quite enough explanation. It's not meant to be an exhaustive reference work like Hammer's German Grammer, though. As long as you accept it as just something to jog your memory and give you a little help, it's a good book.

A girl down the hall in college had this book, and I found myself borrowing it probably once a day. Finally, she ended up giving it to me. The reason it is so helpful is that it lists the mistakes you are likely to make as a native English speaker learning German and then tells you how to correct them. It goes through all the parts of speech in a very clear and engaging way. It really had me exclaiming "Ah ha!!" at a rate of something like 3 times per page. Great as a supplement for a German course and for someone trying to learn on their own. If you are looking to buy the essentials for learning German, I would recommend this, "Teach yourself German Vocabulary" of the Teach Yourself series, a good dictionary, a verb book, and a good intermediate short story reader. Then you can feel confident enough to move on to primary texts!

When I bought the book, my expectations may have been too high. At any rate, I was disappointed. Roughly eight out of ten idioms I looked up were not listed, idioms such es "jemandem reinen Wein einschenken," or "fishing for compliments." To be of real value, the book would have to list roughly ten times as many idioms as it currently does.

This is not exactly the most useful German reference book in existence, but for the German speaking linguistician, this is a good find. I am a German major and I have engaged in taking Linguistics, and I must say that this book is a delight to read. The comparison and contrasting of idioms between English and German is attention grabbing, especially when you know that phrases like, "Like father, like son" and "der Apfel faellt nicht weit von dem Baum" have like idiomatic meanings, but they aren't similar at all literally. I'd recommend it for the 3rd year German high school student on up. It's interesting and you just might learn something.

I didn't purchase this book from Amazon, but still think it's worth reviewing. One of the most difficult aspects of learning an unfamiliar language is the elusive "figure of speech." Literally translated into gibberish, these phrases need to be known to truly capture the full effect of German.

The book has an easy to follow layout. It lists the keyword (Ger) and definition (Eng), a short phrase (Ger) and its meaning (Eng), and a full sentence indicating a possible usage (Eng & Ger). In the second half of the book, the languages and idioms are reversed. This book is equally served by the German living in the US.

Most importantly, this book is amazingly accurate. I had a German coworker peruse this title, and he affirmed that most really are commonly used, well-known sayings, although he wouldn't use or rarely heard a fourth of the phrases. Much like other aspects of the German language, I'm sure there are regional differences.

If you seek a well-rounded German vernacular, this book is a terrific and inexpensive addition to your library.

Arranged alphabetically by relevant word, this book contains some interesting idioms. Some of the idioms have a historical or cultural basis, but this isn't explained, so the curious student would have to follow up in a heavier and more expensive reference work--for example the big "Wahrig" German-to-German unilingual dictionary. For example, "German Idioms" lists "nach Adam Riese" 'according to Adam Riese' as an idiom meaning "exactly" (i.e., as when you're confident you've added a column of figures correctly), but doesn't say who A.R. was; the big Wahrig does this, however briefly. The same goes for "nullachtfuenfzehn" (meaning "no great shakes," Wahrig explains it comes from the standard dimensions of an ordinary German apartment). However, "Lieschen Mueller" is in the idioms book but not in Wahrig. So, I'd say the idioms book is good as a scholarly provocation but not as a scholarly fulfillment; but for that reason alone it's good value for the money and should be amusing for the advanced student of German.

I am a high school German teacher. In Henry Strutz's German Idioms I found a wonderful reference book that has provided me as well as my students with the appropriate expressions in German in many subject areas. The 2000 idioms cover a wide range of subjects including the expression that Germans hold their thubms for luck: "den Daumen druecken"- while we cross our fingers. If you are looking for a book that will help you grasp a general knowledge of German, this is not the book for you. The reader with a basic knowledge of German will be able to use the English and German indexes in the back to look up key words to find idioms on specific topics. Sometimes its difficult to know what keyword to look up in order to find an idiom on a specific subject. This is a better book for those who are interested in finding the English equivalents of German idioms, not the other way around. There are many funny idioms that have made learning new vocabulary for my students as well as myself much more enjoyable. The book is definately worth the money.

Having completed a six-month crash course in conversational German, I could ask for the train station or if soup came with the meal, but my grammar still needed just a bit of polishing--okay, okay, I did everything in my power not to use a single adjective while in Germany. I thought this book would be just the thing: each chapter is set up as an exploration of one aspect of the German language, reference-grammar style, with page after page of exercises. And, of course that's the way to learn those adjective endings: use them, over and over again, until they get into your blood.

But in the event, the book was a disaster. The grammatical explanations are almost entirely un-illuminating; the layout of the material is unspeakably wretched. What can you say to a presentation of the "strong" adjective endings that is spread out across two pages with the following comment: "Most strong endings are the same as those of the definite article?"

Well, Professor Graves, you're on to a good idea there, since most students with a little German have worked the definite article under our skins. But why don't you just tell us which endings are different? Or present the endings in a single table on a single page with the der-die-das table off to the side?

Of course, he does neither of those things. The endings are one or two letters and would fit comfortably in quite a narrow table, but Graves must clutter up the presentation with useless debris, so one entry covers two lines of text: "brav_e_ Kind_er_" and on the next line, "good children." By providing English and German, he feels compelled to set off all of the German text in boldface, with the endings themselves--the important information--in bold italics. And, since bold italics have less width, less ink, and less visual "weight" than plain boldface, this has the perverse result of making the endings--the whole point of the table--harder to pick out of the text! To say nothing of the fact that the ending of the _noun_ receives precisely as much emphasis as that of the adjective, and that the width of the entries, combined with the spacing and the generous margins on the page, force him to deal with masculine and feminine on page 29, and neuter and plural in another table on page 30!

How on earth is the student meant to gain from this? What I want to see is the pattern of the endings, and how they differ from the pattern of definite article endings. In the end, I had to take out my pen and make my own table in the margin of page 30, continually flipping back and forth to copy out the half of Graves' table that was uselessly on the other side of the paper. I then wrote out a table of the definite articles, compared the two, and circled the genitive singular, masculine and neuter endings--the answer to the professor's little puzzle about which endings differ from the der-die-das pattern (they use -en instead of -es). After all that, I finally have some useful data in a usable format, and a pearl of insight into the adjectives that coy Professor Graves couldn't make the time to just put into the text.

Whatever he was spending his time on, it certainly wasn't writing good German text. Now, I realize that this is a basic-level book, and certain limitations exist. But my textbooks such as "Teach Yourself German" and "Colloquial German" somehow managed to come up with simple text that, although a bit stilted, managed to be useful, plausible, and even a trifle engaging. And here? "The splendid educational method of the parents results in the good manners of the well-behaved children." Now, this reads like something out of the Quotations of Chairman Mao in the first place, but there is a far more serious complaint to be lodged--wouldn't it be better if we were flipping back and forth through the book to look up the words for "envelope," "gas station," or "jacket" than "splendid educational method?"

Then we have the passage "Ein Witz" (A Joke), which really shows off the sheer terribleness of the writing, and adds a little casual sexual harassment as a bonus: "Shall I tell you something about the bookkeeper in our office?" "Yes, please." "Well, yesterday suddenly he steps up to our pretty typist, grabs her, and kisses her. At this moment the boss enters and says: 'For this I'm paying you?' What do you think, Mrs. Muller, does the bookkeeper tell him?" "I am anxious to know." "'No, this I do for free.'" It is easy to be boring, and it is easy to be insulting. Doing both in the space of one third of a page shows a unique literary ability.

In the end, I tried to tackle this book on four occasions. I thought to myself, yes, the writing is awful, but I need the practice. And perhaps there is some value to be wrung out of this book--but my time is just too scarce to waste it here, when so many other teachers have taken the time to prepare books that are actually useful and engaging. I will mention just a few: Nice and Easy German Grammar, Teach Yourself German Grammar, and 1001 Pitfalls in German, all of which soar where this book stalls.

I've now moved on to "Teach Yourself German Extra," and I'm back to interest, enjoyment and advancement. May I encourage you to profit from my mistake, and avoid making a fruitless detour into the morass of "The Easy Way?"

This definitely doesn't live up to the standard set by the other Easy Way Books. The writing is awful. Sure, it helps you learn german, but if you need to do that there are many other books out there that will do the job better, with better writing. The book would actually be very good if this guy wasn't such a horrible writer. His paragraphs lack coherence and jump from idea to idea without any sort of "bridge". Even his commentary is disorganized. In most areas its good, but the horrible prose makes it a chore to read. Did I mention that the writing sucks?

Personally, I enjoyed this book. I thought that the writing was fine, and at times, quite humourous. One great thing about this book is the exercises that are written in each chapter - they really make you think, and make you remember what you learned throughout the chapter. Unfortunately, the book doesn't give you enough space for you to write in your answers, but that didn't pose much of a problem for me. Another downfall is that there aren't any pictures, unlike "French: The Easy Way" and "Spanish: The Easy Way", which were recently purchased by my family.

Before buying this book, I would recommend reading another book on German grammar, just to get a feel for the language. I think this book is most effectively used when the reader has somewhat of an understanding of the German language, and it should not be used by someone who has never studied German before. If you want to start learning German, you should look into the Berlitz books; especially the "Essentials" series. "Essential German" is the first book about the German language that I bought, and I think it's wonderful.

Overall, this is a fine book. If you've studied German before, or know something about the language, I advise you purchase "German: The Easy Way".