While phrasebooks are primarily aimed at tourists, they can also be useful resources for more serious students of a language. You get lots of vocabulary, turns of phrase and local color all wrapped in a single compact package. A columnar layout lends itself to impromptu self-testing. Berlitz and Lonely Planet are two such publishers, but the Marco Polo German Phrasebook has some special features you might find attractive. It has an entertaining section on colloquial expressions and many pictures that interlocutors can point to in order to clarify things. Particularly thoughtful inclusions are a set of (alas unnamed) color and pattern swatches and illustrations of a car and a bicycle with important components identified in both languages.

First German Reader edited by Harry Steinhauer, published by Dover
ISBN: 978-0-486-46179-3
(Also available as e-book.)

With the subtitle, A Beginner’s Dual-Language Book, this small volume presents a considered selection of short stories, essays and poems, in German on one page and in English on the facing page. Famous German literary figures are represented, including Goethe, Schiller and Hesse, but you also get the “To be or not to be” speech from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. There is an essay on the German language, a quick survey of German Philosophy, and brief biographies of Goethe, Kant and Bach. You get a crash course in German literary culture while improving your German without having to reach for a dictionary all the time. Textual materials such as these help nurture familiarity with the simple past tense or preterite, as well as introduce you to more complex sentence constructions.

A great find, this.

Bilingual collections of short stories are also published by Penguin, under the rubric “Parallel Text”.

Easy German, published by Usborne
ISBN: 978-1-409-55554-4

Something a bit different. A colorful little book that teaches German as it follows the exploits of a group of young people searching for a hidden treasure. Two-page spreads consisting of delightful comic-book illustrations with a short vocabulary list alternate with two-page spreads delivering grammar in an appealing way.

German: How To Speak and Write It by Joseph Rosenberg, published by Dover
ISBN: 978-0-486-20271-6
(Also available as e-book.)

This is a book you fall in love with. Old-fashioned in appearance and approach, yet abundant with astute pedagogy. They just do not make books like this any more! Absolutely charming. You just have to get it! Treat yourself to it, learn from it, treasure it.