Mandarin is a tonal language. This book does not show any tone marks on the pinyin romanization (the english pronounciation key to Chinese characters). That's the major downside. You won't be able to tell the difference in written or spoken pinyin between several, several words.
Other than that, it's basically a fun worksheet book full of useful vocabulary in pinyin (sans tones) and with characters. You won't learn how to draw the characters (no stroke orders), but obviously "Read and Speak" does not include "write". My Mandarin teacher uses this book and tells us what tones to write in, and shows us the stroke order on a board. The CD is quite helpful too, and you can pick-up the general sound of the word from that.
My native-Chinese teacher does find errors here and there, such as apparently "mouse" is not really composed of "little" and "rat" like it tells you; that just means a small-sized or a young rat. Then again, I've never found a book that doesn't have errors... I think the key is learning with a Chinese friend at hand to make sure you're not learning wrong!

Great Start, June 16, 2005
　

I am engaged to an Asian man and decided to learn Chinese. This book is a great way to start.

Each lesson begins with vocabulary: you hear the English equivalent first, then its Chinese counterpart while looking at the pinyin and symbol in the book. (For example: you hear "table," then "zhuo-zi" while you look at the written pin-yin and symbol.) You can cover the pinyin and try to remember/pronounce the chinese word for the English prompt.

Then, usually, a couple recorded,interactive, and simple conversations ensue which incorporate the recently learned vocabulary. And, no chapter is complete without symbol exercises (fill-in-the-blank, or describe the picture). Sometimes, there are games that you can cut out to reinforce your learning.

I've found this book & CD quite helpful and productive. For instance, last night in one of the exercises, I was using newly learned desciption words to describe an alien (ta you hen da de du-zi), and my fiance -- who was turned away from me and working on the computer -- laughed and asked "Who has a big stomach?" This reassured me that my developing skills corrolate into understandable language.

Chinese is less intimidating, and actually a bit fun, with Read & Speak. In the whole scheme of language learning, its place is to introduce foreign speakers to the basics of Chinese. Hopefully, Cheng Ma has/will create other books in this series so that I can continue with this teaching style as my language advances.

so far so good, October 16, 2004
　

I bought this book recently and have been studying it and listening to the cd for several days.
The cd really helps with pronunciation.
The only downside is that they don't use the accent marks in the book.