[.ca] An Introduction to Ancient Greek (Third Edition) (ISBN 0761808531)

Save your money:
I am, at the time of this writing, a Sophomore at St. John's college, where Al & Bob's Introduction to Ancient Greek was the required textbook for Freshman Language class. I spent a little over a year living with their textbook and translating the passages that they included and I cannot in good faith reccomend it to any other student of Greek. The layout of the basic chapters is somewhat eccentric and the appendix of vocabulary in the back is woefully lacking in words needed to translate even the example sentences and usually provide one English word for each Greek word. The footnotes for words used in the original passages, when they exist, are similar. This year St. John's College switched to a different Greek textbook for incoming Freshman, despite the close ties between the authors of this one and the college. I reccomend another textbook.

Differing Opinion:
I was surprised to read Mr. Baldwin's review. I, too, am a current student at Saint John's College (a freshman in Annapolis) and I like Mollin and Williamson's book a great deal. I agree with Mr. Baldwin's claim that the vocabulary listing in the back is unsatisfactory, but I cannot agree with the rest of his review. I find both the layout and the content to be very helpful and the book is, to my estimation, a very good one. I am also compelled to point out that I know nothing about a change in the curriculum at Saint John's to exclude this Greek text or to include another one and I imagine Mr. Baldwin is speaking only of the Santa Fe campus; as of this writing, Mollin and Williamson is still in use by freshmen in Annapolis. Learning a language can be difficult, Ancient Greek perhaps moreso than most, and no book will make it easy. But I have spent a fair bit of time looking at the various introductory texts which are available and I have encountered none which I would prefer to this one. I recommend Mollin and Williamson very highly.