This edition of Glinert's book was a wonderful surprise. As a mostly self-taught learner, I always want a book that offers exercises with an ANSWER KEY, because I want to practise what I've learned -- but I need to know if I'm making mistakes or not.
For some reason, that seems to be a lot to ask. It's just amazing how many perfectly good textbooks appear to assume you will have a teacher, and that giving you a key to the exercises would only help you "cheat" in class. (As if that would be a wise thing to do!)
This book is amazing. In addition to very up-to-date and colloquial usage (a nice change from the usual hoary old Biblical, archaic, quaint passages), this book sets out the modern spoken language in crystal-clear detail, step-by-step, starting from the very basic and working towards the more complex. The author has done a first-rate job of making sense of it all.
I always think that, given that even small children and very stupid people somehow manage to learn their native language quite fluently, if a book on the language makes it look like a very complicated and tricky process, then that means the book should be tossed aside.
Every language book should make language learning simple and straightforward. It should NOT present the language as a complex challenge to the learner, who will have to be a post-graduate student in linguistics to be able to follow it.
This book merits every single one of the five stars I give it, since it is by far the clearest exposition of the language I've yet seen.