Rating: 
Summary: Pragmatic, clear, concise, excellent
Review: I used this book in an extension/evening class at a local college. I quickly got to like and respect it. The book is very pragmatic. It is hard-nosed and hard-headed. There's just no nonsense. It is also very clearly written and, despite its size and considering its subject, very concise. There is, at any rate, not a wasted word between its covers.I disagree with the reviewer who complained that the chapters cannot easily be divided in order to provide acceptable and accessible lesson sizes. At the end of each section within each chapter - perhaps every five or six pages - the authors invite the student to complete a drill that focuses on new material covered only in that section. This makes it easy enough to break down the chapters. The drills are really the great strength of the book. They are very useful: they reinforce the chapter material and they really test the student's understanding of the subject matter. The drills are numerous and well thought out. They range from the intentionally nonsensical - thus thwarting guesswork -- to progressively longer fragments of poems and play in their original form. Finally, I really appreciated the quality of the editing: six hundred error-free pages, much of it in a different language and a different alphabet. I wish every book - especially computer technical books - were printed with as much care and attention to detail.
Rating: 
Summary: Relatively Painless!
Review: Let's face it - there is no such thing as an easy way to learn Classical Greek. One of the fascinations of the language is that it is so different from our own, both in time and space. But that fact alone makes it difficult. This book is the nearest thing I've found to date to making Greek almost easy to learn. It relies very heavily on substitution drills to work through the material. This sounds a bit strange in learning a dead language, but I found that this method gave me a better appreciation of the deeper structure of the language. I also found it easier to pinpoint the areas in the language that gave me the most difficulty, which made these areas easier to review. I'm not throwing away my Crosby and Shaffer or my Godwin and Gulick yet, but to the intelligent beginner I can't suggest a better place to start than with this book. It's not for the fainthearted, but then anybody who wants to tackle Classical Greek should realize they're in for a great experience, but an exhausting one.
Rating: 
Summary: I don't want to recommend because...
Review: Other reveiews are too generous for this book.
This book seemed popular, so I bought.
It was my first book of Greek, so i cannot compare with other books. But there were some problems in it. 1. Too big voulum of 800 pages 2. Too many contents of specific verb variety
leads to make a self-studier frustrating 3. the sentences are dull and
reading comprehensions are too difficult.
How can a novice comprehende directly Plato?
Too difficult stories of greek writers for a starter 4. Too little & not interesting sentences. 5. henseforth could not feel the joy of study and little
progress. Certainly subjuncative moods of this book is helpful,
But to a man of Greek major or a man of high memory
this book would be more helpful.
It's not useful for self-study.
Rating: 
Summary: Use Mastronarde instead
Review: The main problem with this book is the overwhelming size of the units. This not only makes it quite difficult to work through the exercises since you have to digest so much morphology to be able to do them, but it also means that by the end of the book, though you will have a good grasp of syntax and morphology, your working vocabulary will still be quite small. I also found the order in which the grammatical concepts are presented to be somewhat unnatural - the subjunctive and optative are introduced before you have a good feel for the indicative mood and its endings. The verb forms are presented in such quick succession that I ended up not feeling very comfortable with them.
On the plus side, though, the basic concepts morphology and syntax are explained very thoroughly and clearly, and the vocabulary notes (usage notes on each individual word, possible alternative meanings, idiomatic uses, etc.) were quite helpful. There were also plenty of drills and reading sentences for practice. Overall, I'd say this book might be well suited to its original purpose - a workshop setting where all of basic grammar is covered in 6 weeks - but for the general reader it is a bit too dense. For the aspiring self-taught Classicist, I'd recommend Mastronarde. I myself ended up switching over to his book after 10 units of Hansen and Quinn, and find it to be better balanced overall, with shorter, more approachable units, and better organized chapter vocabularies.
Rating:
Summary: Learn Greek
Review: There are two books in Greek language instruction, "Greek: an Intensive Course," and Clyde Pharr's "Homeric Greek." All others are mere pretenders. Classical Greek is not an easy language for the English speaker, and recent attempts to flatten the steepness of the learning curve somehow fail to achieve to critical velocity in my opinion. A sturdy foundation in Greek that will bring a joy lasting a lifetime begins with some dedicated effort, and this book admittedly demands your attention if you want to be successful. Hansen presents the fundamentals of Greek grammar and morphology in a systematic and logical way, building up the foundation on which will stand the demands of more advanced texts. This book will reward you with the effort you put into it. I do want to stress to those who wish to learn Greek on their own that this is an intensive course designed for use in a classroom. If you are not already familiar with a language that use inflections to indicate grammatical relationships of words within the sentence, this book will perhaps be overwhelming at first. In this case I suggest Clyde Pharr's classic "Homeric Greek" as a prelude to this book. My only complaint with "Greek: An Intensive Course" is that it tends to ignore the arts in favor of the philosophy of the Greek culture. I would like to see more Sophocles, Euripides, and other playwrights of the Golden Age of Athens. Language and culture exist together in a symbiosis, and the richness of the language can only be seen in readings from all the major genres, poetry, drama, history, and politics--not just philosophy, and certainly not just one author--namely Plato.
Rating:
Summary: Not Perfect But There's Not Anything Much Better
Review: There are two books in Greek language instruction, "Greek: an Intensive Course," and Clyde Pharr's "Homeric Greek." All others are mere pretenders. Classical Greek is not an easy language for the English speaker, and recent attempts to flatten the steepness of the learning curve somehow fail to achieve to critical velocity in my opinion. A sturdy foundation in Greek that will bring a joy lasting a lifetime begins with some dedicated effort, and this book admittedly demands your attention if you want to be successful. Hansen presents the fundamentals of Greek grammar and morphology in a systematic and logical way, building up the foundation on which will stand the demands of more advanced texts. I do, however, want to stress that this is an intermediate level book, and perhaps should not be the first book one attempts. Its 21 Units cover a great deal of material. Although, no prerequisite knowledge on the part of the reader is assumed by the text, it's explanations are very to the point and concise, which may not be as clear to the novitiate as needs to be. This book does not do any hand-holding to guide the reader through the difficult sections, so to speak. I suggest Clyde Pharr's "Homeric Greek" for the pure beginner, and then this book. This book will reward you with the effort you put into it. My only complaint is that it tends to ignore the arts in favor of the philosophy of the Greek culture. I would like to see more Sophocles, Euripides, and other playwrights of the Golden Age of Classical Greece. Language and culture exist together in a symbiosis, and the richness of the language can only be seen in readings from all the major genres, poetry, drama, history, and politics--not just philosophy, and certainly not just one author--namele Plato.
Rating:
Summary: Learn Greek
Review: There are two books in Greek language instruction, "Greek: an Intensive Course," and Clyde Pharr's "Homeric Greek." All others are mere pretenders. Classical Greek is not an easy language for the English speaker, and recent attempts to flatten the steepness of the learning curve somehow fail to achieve to critical velocity in my opinion. A sturdy foundation in Greek that will bring a joy lasting a lifetime begins with some dedicated effort, and this book admittedly demands your attention if you want to be successful. Hansen presents the fundamentals of Greek grammar and morphology in a systematic and logical way, building up the foundation on which will stand the demands of more advanced texts. I do, however, want to stress that this is an intermediate level book, and perhaps should not be the first book one attempts. Its 21 Units cover a great deal of material. Although, no prerequisite knowledge on the part of the reader is assumed by the text, it's explanations are very to the point and concise, which may not be as clear to the novitiate as needs to be. This book does not do any hand-holding to guide the reader through the difficult sections, so to speak. I suggest Clyde Pharr's "Homeric Greek" for the pure beginner, and then this book. This book will reward you with the effort you put into it. My only complaint is that it tends to ignore the arts in favor of the philosophy of the Greek culture. I would like to see more Sophocles, Euripides, and other playwrights of the Golden Age of Classical Greece. Language and culture exist together in a symbiosis, and the richness of the language can only be seen in readings from all the major genres, poetry, drama, history, and politics--not just philosophy, and certainly not just one author--namele Plato.
Rating: 
Summary: I don't want to recommend because...
Review: This book seemed to me popular, so I bought.
It was my first book of Greek, so i cannot compare with other books. But there were some problems in it. 1. Too big voulum of 800 pages and high price 2. Too many contents of specific verb variety
leads to make a self-studier frustrating 3. Too difficult stories of greek writers for a starter 4. Too little & not interesting sentences. 5. henseforth could not feel the joy of study and little
progress. Certainly this book gave some portion of help to me,
but the problem is that it gave not so much the joy of self-study. More compact, much self-reader friendly and easy text is postulated.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly written more a reference than a text book
Review: This book's English prose is filled with jargon which a beginning student of Greek really does not need--it is also infelicitous and hard to follow. It is not a book of great"clarity" indeed sometimes it is incomprehensible. I have shown it to teachers of English composition who were amused or outraged. It is a book that will discourage the less talented from pursuing Greek unlike Athenaze which takes a slower and more discursive approach. If you have a great talent for morphology this may be your text--for us ordinary folks it is overwhelming and at times so badly written that one feels a need to translate the English rather than the Greek.
Rating:
Summary: please someone, write a new Greek textbook
Review: This is by far the best textbook around for teaching Ancient Greek and yet it is terrible. The individual units are far far too big for one lesson and the exercises cannot easily be divided up in order to provide acceptable and accessible lesson sizes. Someone needs to either revise this text or write a new one; one with lessons of an acceptable size, but which is not dumbed down like Athenaze and yet not unusable like Mastonarde. This text is recomended, but only for an intensive class (hence the name) or as a review text. Not for the general classroom.
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