About the books: d’Ooge, it seems, is (or once was) popular mainly because it was out of copyright and is reproduced on this site. Moreland & Fleischer is supposed to be good but difficult:
http://discourse.textkit.com/t/moreland-fleisher-too-tough/6614/1
There’s a popular book by Ørberg (well, two books) called Lingua Latina per se illustrata (LLPSI or just Orberg). This course uses limited English and is designed to teach Latin by the inductive method; there are many on this site who use(d) it. Personally I wouldn’t trust myself to learn Latin that way without a teacher as I’d be concerned about drawing the wrong conclusions and screwing it all up, but some people swear by it. The other main text (and the one used in many college courses) is Wheelock’s Latin. It uses the traditional grammar-translation method; if that’s for you then it’s hard to find a better course IMO: Wheelock’s has many, many exercises and readings and is reasonably-paced and clear. A selling point is that the exercises are adapted from Latin literature; it’s a bit of a gimmick it’s a decent introduction nonetheless. You can find the book for under $20 on Amazon. More about it and the cottage industry around it:
http://discourse.textkit.com/t/editions/14019/1
To toot my own horn: my thoughts on studying Latin and how it pertains to other disciplines (my post is the most recent; it got positive feedback in a private message so I’ll post it here 
):
http://discourse.textkit.com/t/the-mental-utility-and-profit-of-studying-latin/14169/1
Learning Latin is a major commitment and you should be prepared for it. Find the time for it and stick with it. From your introductory post it seems that you could do it.