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Rating: 
Summary: Great book but should have been organized better
Review: This book is divided into a few major sections. Script - A few letters are introduced per chapter and practice exercises are given at the end.
Grammar - starts with a conversation, which has an English translation. Then the grammar used in that conversation is explained.
Bengali literature - With English translations
Glossary - uses script and transliteration I bought this new version to get the two CDs. They are so much easier to use than the tapes that came with the previous version. I got tired of rewinding and fast forwarding trying to find what I wanted to practice. The content on the CDs is divided into several 1-2 minute tracks. While this is a great book I actually don't like the way Radice introduced each grammatical concept. Things like tense, possessives, etc. are often scattered over different chapters. Having used the previous version of this book for a while I recommend that you first learn the script (the chapters introducing the script are excellent). For the grammar section get a notebook and divide each page into two columns. Pick out major grammatical concepts such as possessives, plurals, verb tense rules (past, present, future, present continuous, etc.), familiar/polite forms, imperatives, etc. In the first column write out the grammatical rule for each concept in your own words, in the other column write the examples that Radice gives. Then study from your notebook. It will be very difficult to learn Bengali reading this book chapter-by-chapter. Due to the scattered organization of the content I am giving this book four stars instead of five. To reiterate, don't read this book cover-to-cover. For best results pull out the major concepts and organise them in a more logical manner. Also, you might find 'Introduction to Bengali Pt. 1 A Basic Course in Spoken Bengali' by Edward Dimock very helpful in addition to the Radice book.
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