Nouvelle Grammaire du Français, Cours de Civilisation Française de la Sorbonne

This is the textbook from a three-piece set (also including an exercise book and answer key) that I used in a French Institute Alliance Française course here in New York City.

Nouvelle Grammaire du Français (its explanations, its examples, etc.) is entirely in French. This textbook is thorough, but not a lot of fun. It feels like work, and there is for my language-learning taste too much text without exercises (in fact, the exercises are all in the separate exercise book).

Regarding that companion exercise book, by the way: the layout of the exercises is quite ugly, and there isn’t actually room to do the exercises in the same book, which I find annoying.

Finally, I understand why, for pedagogical reasons, answer keys are sometimes published separately from the exercises to which they are providing answers, but as a grownup and a self-study student, I was irritated by having to remember to haul around a textbook and an exercise book and an answer key with me.

Nonetheless, the three-book package is very comprehensive and very authoritative—so, despite my bitching, it gets four stars. 

Nouvelle Grammaire du Français is currently out of print, but as of this writing, one can still obtain reasonably priced copies on Amazon.com and, if you are in New York City, at the French Institute Alliance Française.