íSaludos! Text/Audio CD pkg.: Introductory Spanish

Rating:
Summary: The delicate balance of quality and price
Review: Saludos was intended for college students of Spanish who can not afford the more expensive books in the market. However, it fails miserably in achieving its goals. First, at 100 dollars for a softcover book plus a student manual and one audio CD, the learning materials are too expensive for what they are worth.
Second: the graphic design and visual materials are terribly unattractive.
Third: this first edition is riddled with typos and more serious mistakes, such as the sentence in the student manual "refer to page 73" when this page is blank on the textbook.
Finally, the only positive aspect of the book is that it attempts to reduce the number of grammatical structures in the first 5 lessons. Instructors might be drawn to this book because it offers the possibility of teaching all the lessons in two semesters. But because of its poor organization and very skimpy glossary, I dare say that students are not enthusiastic about their learning materials, which might later on backfire on a teaching program.
Bottom line: don't buy it --- keep searching for better books.