I suspect others have given you the information you need, but I'll reply anyway. The books on that page you linked to are the ISTD syllabus technique books. They're basically meant to be used by teachers for learning the information that they need to pass teaching examinations. Lots of students have them though, too, because they do contain a lot of useful information. Not everything, you'll still need to make notes, but all the basics of the figures are there. The books cover all syllabus figures for all the international style dances. The figures are separated by teacher titles (student teacher, associate, member, fellow IIRC without checking) but they're basically equivalent to metal level (pre-bronze, bronze, silver, gold). The grey standard book has waltz, tango, foxtrot, and quickstep (the short Viennese waltz syllabus is covered in a separate ISTD publication) and the five red latin books each cover one dance. If you want all five latin dances in one book, look for the older version, before this latest syllabus revision. It won't be quite the same, but it is a lot easier to carry around than five books. You probably won't be able to learn figures from the book, not easily at least, but once you know figures the books are great reminders. You can get similar manuals published by the IDTA. I think someone mentioned the IDTA standard book by Guy Howard and I'll have to admit that I actually like that one better than the ISTD one. It contains all of the same figures except the Bounce Fallaway in foxtrot, some figures aren't described multiple times like in the ISTD books, but that's not a problem, it has additional figures not in the ISTD syllabus, and the charts/tables contain more information. Well, it's the same information actually, but what the ISTD book lists separately below the tables, the IDTA book includes in the tables. BTW, reading the tables does take some practice. If you're a beginning student, you probably don't really need the technique books yet, but you will probably find them helpful later if you stick with ballroom and start to work your way up through the levels, learning more figures. I hope this helps.

--
James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall

The books are intended to form the basis for dance teacher's professional examinations at Associate, Licentiate/Member and Fellowship levels. The figures are also used as the syllabus for Bronze, Silver and Gold medals.

The Imperial Society (ISTD) book is based on work by Alex Moore. There is a similar manual for the International Dance Teachers Association (IDTA) by Guy Howard which I personally prefer.

The books include definitions of terms such as CBM, CBMP, alignment etc but they are _not_ intended as "teach yourself" books. At examination, a dance teacher is expected to quote from the book and also explain what it means.

You don't say what dance experience you have but I would regard the books as a reference for use after receiving instruction from a good teacher.