Looking at this book again, I am certain that my failure to learn Russian cannot be attributed to the quality of the materials or the courses I took. The simple fact is that I was too busy as a grad student to take on a new language, and that Russian did not interest me as much as I had hoped. As far as it goes, this is a very good second-year textbook, that begins with a review of some basic concepts students will have learned in their first year and then plunges into the complex world of Russian grammar. As far as I can recall, there was no equally good second-year German textbook at the time I took it (all my German teachers seemed to be writing one of their own), and learning German without one was quite a challenge. For anyone serious about teaching or learning Russian, V'Puti will be an excellent choice.