This newly revised version of the well-regarded intermediate Russian course based on Il'f and Petrov's classic novel The Twelve Chairs now includes the full 3 CD-ROM multimedia set from Lexicon Bridge based on a first-rate film adaptation of the novel (formerly sold separately for $90). The CD-ROMs run in any web browser, and are fully compatible with both Windows and Macintosh computers.

Designed for students who have had at least one year of Russian, this textbook is appropriate for the 3rd, 4th, or 5th semester and can be covered in one or two semesters. It is the middle course of the series of Russian textbooks produced by the Upstate New York writing team from Cornell and Colgate universities (Beginning Russian and Advanced Russian are the others), but it can be used in any other sequence of texts.

The main part of this book consists of 18 lessons, all with the same tripartite structure: texts, dialogs, and exercises. The texts are a coherent, smooth-flowing abridgement of the classic novel by Il'f and Petrov. The dialogs are designed to develop fluency in the spoken style of literary Russian. The exercises are divided into four groups: text exercises, dialog exercises, grammar exercises, and a translation. The texts and the dialogs are accompanied by extensive comments on Russian grammar, style, and culture.

The text exercises are designed to develop the art of paraphrasing and the dialog exercises offer practice in using familiar cliches and conversational gambits. The grammar exercises are based primarily on the section of the book that follows the 18 lessons, the Overview of Russian Conjugation by Alexander Nakhimovsky. This section contains a detailed analysis of the verb system: the prefixes, suffixes, and the types of roots that play a role in Russian word formation. Although there is considerable overlap between the three main parts of each lesson in terms of grammar and vocabulary, it is possible to use them independently and to skip one or another of them.

Information on the inflection of Russian words is given in a 12-page section on Russian Endings at the end of the book. This concise review of the rules for adding endings onto stems also contains extensive illustrative paradigms of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. The rules given in this section are essentially the rules of Beginning Russian, but some of them are more detailed. This section also serves as a guide for using the exhaustive Russian-English glossary, which contains all of the content words of the book along with their morphological characteristics (stress patterns, irregular forms, aspect partners, etc.). This inflectional information is based on A.A. Zaliznjak's grammatichskii slovar' russkogo iazyka. There is also a complete English-Russian word index.

Each lesson has additional readings in the form of a dialog between two students; this provides vocabulary for discussing courses, teachers, textbooks, impressions and thoughts about fictional characters, etc. Short displays of Russian roots are interspersed among the lessons. The book is beautifully illustrated with reproductions of the original Kukryniksy drawings.

The CD-ROM set bundled with the book will finally let you put that high octane, multimedia computer to good use. It is a classic Russian satirical film complete with cultural notes, a true multimedia learning tool. Immerse yourself in a Russian-speaking environment with a few digital advantages: a click of the mouse plays a scene or a phrase in a window on your computer screen as many times as you like, while a linked transcript of the dialog, a summary of the scene, and a description of the characters, places, and objects in it&emdash;all in Russian&emdash;are displayed in another window.

Difficult words are "clickable," opening a small window with glosses and cultural or grammatical information. Clicking on a phrase plays a clip illustrating the action (giving you a full-motion visual dictionary!), or brings up a still of the object described by the phrase. In the transcript window, you can select a section of the dialog and see the exchange played out in the movie window.

Individual learners will appreciate the program's thoroughness and flexibility, while instructors will find the transcript, descriptions, and summaries a rich source of course material. Anyone interested in Russian language and culture will enjoy the program.

The film is Leonid Gajdaj's Dvenadtsat´ stul´ev, a rather faithful adaptation of the book, which was made in the 1960s by filmmakers from Mosfilm's ETO (Eksperimental´noe tvorcheskoe obłedinenie). Some of the era's best actors appeared in the film. These three CD-ROMs present about 100 very short (one to two minutes) scenes from the film. The entire story line is preserved, and, of course, they present a unique cultural portrait of the era. Their total length is two hours.

The CD-ROM set was previously available for $89.95, so the newly bundled edition of Intermediate Russian represents a great bargain on this landmark piece of Russian language-learning software.