I'm studying Russian at the university; my text book has been
written by my professors (in Italy we follow language lessons
with 2 teachers, the official prof. and the lettore, a kind of
associate native-speaker teacher) and its name is "La Lingua
Russa del 2000". It does explain grammatic really clearly, but
actually it does not contain much exercises, so I had to bought
another book full of taskes, to get prepared to an exam.
I have to say, it seems easy to me to study Russian with this
material...