Kanji in Context helped me tremendously to learn the kanji. Using these books with the software Mnemosyne, I learned all 1945 of the daily use kanji in about six months (prior to this, I had studied Japanese on and off for three years, but I had not focused on the kanji).
What sets Kanji in Context apart is that it orders kanji by shape (radical), and focuses on reading adult level material, not writing the kanji.
This workbook covers the second half of the 1945 kanji, and is divided into 48 lessons. This makes it significantly shorter than the first book. Each lesson is roughly two pages, of which half of a page is common idioms and phrases, and the remainder is example sentences. In the workbooks, this is all in Japanese only, and furigana is only provided for words that one has not yet learned.
For English translations of the words and the readings of the new words, one must also purchase the reference manual. That makes this series a bit expensive, but the speed advantage from using these materials is so enormous that I think even with the added cost it is well worth it.
The series assumes you know at least 300 kanji to begin with, but the grammar and vocabulary are sufficiently advanced that I think it is probably suitable only for students with two or more years of college level Japanese. If you are just starting studying Japanese, you are better off not worrying about the kanji too much until you decide that you're really willing to learn them all. Once you make that decision, this book is an excellent place to start.