This book is an excellent supplement but shouldn't be used as the end-all, be-all book to learn Mandarin. I'm on my 4th year of Chinese study, and I thumbed through this book to review some of the earlier grammar rules I'd forgotten. It was short and to the point, which was nice, but it assumes a basic level of understanding. I'm also not a fan of the pinyin first format. I prefer to have the characters above the pinyin so my eye will be drawn to them. I found myself just reading the pinyin in the book, though all of the characters are very basic.