| The first half of this book is a very good primer for a complete novice. It explains not only the rules, but also the goals of the game, with small examples and plenty of diagrams. The book starts on the basic rules, with special rules like "castling" and "en passant" given their own pages. There are also basic tactics, basic checkmate patterns, and basic endgames. Capablanca believed that the endgame must be taught first, and Emms here does a good job of explaining how to seal the victory. I've found that to be the most important part of chess for a beginner to learn. (I'm talking about King + 2 Rooks v. a lone King, for example, or King + Queen v. King.) It gives him confidence that he can actually win a game. It reinforces the legal movement of the pieces. And it is simple enough to be fully understood. I highly recommend the first half of the book to a complete novice. The second half is very practical and could interest even an intermediate player. It goes into standard openings and tricky combinations. This material would be very challenging for a beginner, but something special about the book makes it more accessible, something which also appears in my favorite chess book, Chernev & Reinfeld's 'Winning Chess' (and, in a way, 'Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess'): There are often two diagrams per example. I'll explain what I mean. Typical children's books have colorful arrows in an attempt to show movement. I guess that's not bad, but it can be distracting and condescending to an adult. The Chernev method was to show a diagram of the example, and another diagram midway through the combination. That enables an intermediate player like me to visualize a difficult combination completely. Emms uses this technique extensively in the final section on combinations and occasionally in the sections on openings. This makes the second half of the book much less intimidating to a beginner. The lines and simple variations are still shown under the diagrams in Algebraic Notation, so nothing is lost. Throughout the rest of the book, there is often a diagram showing the very next move, which is the same idea at a beginner level. So I recommend the second half to a beginner who is curious about the magic that chess has to offer. This should last a novice several months. 'Concise' is not the best description of this book. It is not the lessons which are truncated (as in some purported tutorial books like 'Master Chess in 21 Days') but rather the book itself. It is a small square book. At 288 pages, it should be considered a 144 page pocketbook. However, the space is generally well-occupied, so it is somewhat like a 288 page Pandolfini book (which may have lots of whitespace and filler text). It may be over-priced for its content compared with the classics, but its readability makes up for this. This is a big review for a little book, so I'll stop here. | 
