[TheRealPomax]

Yeah, we've both been around for a long time now. Tae Kim's book is great to have too, but we wrote our material with different audiences in mind. His work takes a slightly more gentle approach, my work started with being for people who want the same material as university students of Japanese get, without being able to afford $100 text books (my print copy's $30 max) or even without being able to afford classes (not every country has affordable education for those who would do well).

I'd echo the link to his Guide to Japanese, and if you want a grammar reference as well, adding my book to the mix can carry you through your first year university pretty decently.

[xamuel]

In my experience, those $100 university textbooks aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Tae Kim's guide is infinitely better, if you're an autodidact. Use Tae Kim for grammar, use Heisig Volume 1 for kanji, and use real Japanese for everything else.

[TheRealPomax]

That's why I wrote mine - my fellow students needed lecture notes in "not Dutch", which mine were, so this books started as a website with my lecture notes in html form, which slowly grew into the material for this book. It's $25 on paper, free online (donate whatever you feel it's worth), and generally covers what actually made sense to cover given the classes we were in.