When I was a 1900 player in high school, I remember going through the first book of Euwe and Kramer's two-volume work on the middlegame and the Dover edition of Pachmann's MODERN CHESS STRATEGY. Working through them cover to cover I learned a tremendous amount and quickly found myself heading towards 2200.

Until recently, the old cannons - Kramer and Euwe, Pachmann and Fine - were all the aspiring student had to work with. There have been remarkably few comprehensive middlegame books written in the last forty years. That's changed recently. One recent welcome addition to the field is LESSONS IN CHESS STRATEGY. The author of the well received CHESS RECIPES FROM THE GRANDMASTERS KITCHEN (click to see Donaldson's and Bauer's reviews of this book), Beim has produced a work which combines the old classics with new examples. For example, in the chapter on the isolated center pawn, such classic games as Smyslov-Karpov USSR Championship 1971 and Korchnoi-Karpov World Championship 1981, are given alongside the contemporary example Donchev-Eingorn Debrecen 1992.

Beim has arranged his material in nine chapters (The Geometry of the Chessboard, The Major Pieces, The Isolated Center Pawn, The Central Passed Pawn, The Space Advantage, Zugzwang, The Bishop Pair, Symmetrical Pawn-Structures, and Static and Dynamic Features). What makes this book especially valuable are the 124 exercises given to test the reader's understanding. These exercises come with full and detailed solutions.