This book is phenomenal. It is written with concise common sense and humor. I am a student who just began learning German professionally 20 hours/week. I use this book as my self-selected textbook; I refer to it every day. Edward Swick wrote it for Americans and it has all the grammar rules and the short cuts to remember them. The best feature is the pronunciation guides after German words: particularly helpful with sounds we don't have in American English, such as the guttural "ch" and the three umlaut letters.
This book also includes cultural information, the new spelling rules, common German usage, and appendices with basic German-English and English-German dictionaries. Combine this book with some CD's such as Learn in Your Car German and you will be learning German in no time!