English accents and dialects is a unique introductory survey of the main regional and social varieties of english spoken in the british isles

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OK, first the good points about the book. It's superbly organised, providing word lists at the beginning of every chaptre, which gives you a great idea of how different accents compare on identical sets of words. The intro about different styles and registers of Received Pronunciation, including grammatical points, is also of great help to understand how accents may differ. The tape is a must, and the dialogues in it are great, since they were recorded in a very spontaneous manner. OK, so, the sound's quality is not the best around, but you get spontaneous dialogues (and therefore more natural dialectal pronunciations) in exchange. The only problem I'd see is that is that stylistic varieties are not covered more in depth. J.C. Wells' "English Accents: An Introduction" and "English Accents: The Brittish Isles" offer a lot more information, cover more nuances of accent, and are in general more complete that this book. Anyhow, it's still quite a good buy if you're interested in regional varieties of English in the Brittish Isles.