This A5 book is designed less for the casual holidaymaker and more for those who want to learn Italian beyond simply knowing the basics. Simply and clearly laid out, Hugo Italian is divided in fairly lengthy ten chapters which contain dialogue, a lot of vocabulary, grammatical points and comprehension exercises. The heavy emphasis on grammatical points makes this a good book to use in preparation for a course at a language school, while less useful when it comes to learning conversational Italian. The accompanying CD or cassette is useful only as a guide to pronunciation and not as a substitute to learn from in the car, for example, as it merely recites the verb tables or grammatical points listed in the book without further clarification. However it contains a lot of information which makes it a good reference guide to return to.