I'm currently doing six different Assimil courses every day, for six different languages: Danish, Norwegian, French, Portuguese, German and Italian.
At the beginning I began working with several editions for each language, as this table shows:
, but then I came to the conclusion that it was better for me to stick to just one edition per language.
I've reviewed:
1950, Without Toil, German-English.
1986, Assimil - nuevo aleman sin esfuerzo, German-Spanish.
2004, Assimil - L'allemand - 2004, German-French.
From these three I've chosen 1950, as it has 126 lessons and more content per lesson. 1986 is better in one aspect: it introduces the "du" at the beginning of the dialogues, whereas most of 1950 talks about "Sie". 2004 has much less content that the previous two.
On the advanced level you have
Assimil - La pratique de l'allemand, 1969
Perfectionnement Allemand, 2003.
1957, French without toil
1983, Assimil El Nuevo Francés Sin Esfuerzo 1983
2000, French without Toil.
For French I've decided to remain with the 1983 book in Spanish and the audio from 2000, which is almost exactly the same, but with better recordings. The recorded dialogues from 1957 are rather stiff for my taste.
On the advanced level you have three editions:
Business French - Le francais des affaires
Francais en pratique, Using French
Francese Perfezionamento (French-Italian edition).
Assimil - El nuevo italiano sin esfuerzo 1986
Assimil - Italian without toil (1957)
Assimil - Italien sans peine 2004
For Italian I've chosen 1986, although 1957 is also very good: the dialogues are funnier and you have songs aswell. The downside is that you have more outdated expressions. It's also better for me to use 1986, as it's Italian/Spanish, whereas 1957 is Italian/English. As you know, Spanish is much closer to Italian than English, so the general notes and pronunciation notes are made accordingly.
Assimil - El Nuevo Portugues Sin Esfuerzo 2005 (Portuguese from Portugal)
Assimil Portugais du Brésil 2004 (Portuguese from Brazil)
The same reason applies here than in Italian: 2005 is Portuguese/Spanish, so the notes and pronunciation are more useful to me. The dialogues so far aren't specially bright, just regular conversations.
I haven't used Assimil to learn Swedish, but I've heard great reviews for "Le suedois..." and I've seen it and I can vouch for its quality; the same for the 2011 edition. What I'm using for Swedish instead is Rivstart B1-B2: 16 chapters, each one covering one particular subject (sport, job, legends, food), all in Swedish, hours of recorded native audio.
Assimil Le suedois sans peine tome 1, tome 2
Assimil Lo svedese senza sforzo 2011
RIVSTART B1-B2
I only reached lesson 30th of Russe 1971 and a few chapters of the Penguin course. Regarding Michel Thomas, I've completed the Foundation course and I reached around lesson 45/90 of Pimsleur. The following list has more an illustrative purpose, to show the different editions/material of Russian that you can find around:
Assimil Russe sans peine 1971
The New Penguin Russian Course
Pimsleur Russian 1-90
Michel Thomas Russian
Assimil Russian with Ease 2011
Assimil Ruso perfeccionamiento 2014
Assimil Le russe 2008
Assimil Le nouveau Russe sans peine 1995
Assimil Kit Conversation Russe
For Norwegian and Danish it was a simpler matter, as there are only two editions. Well, actually, there's also Le danois from 2015, that I haven't seen nor used.
Le Norvégien sans peine, 1997: so far so good.
Le Danois dans peine, 1992: only 65 lessons.
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