After experiencing a good deal of frustration while trying to go through my old grammer books, which contain an enormous amount of unnecessary and impractical commentary, I decided to give this one a try. I was at first somewhat skeptical, since I didn't think it would be possible to fully cover Russian, a very complicated language, in such an abbreviated format. But I was very pleasantly surprised to find that, not only are all of the essentials covered in a clear, concise manner, but all the exceptions to the rules (and there are quite a few in Russian) are covered as well.

This book may be somewhat disappointing to a very limited audience (e.g. students of linguistics), but it contains more than enough information for anyone who desires to speak Russian, even at a very high level, while dispensing with all of the fat that tend to bog down other grammers.

It's not surprising that this title comes from Oxford, which has also been publishing the finest English-Russian dictionary for decades. Bravo!