The 2008 U.S. Champion, GM Yury Shulman and his student Rishi Sethi are the coauthors of this work. It is designed as a resource for chess beginners that will provide a basic knowledge of the fundamentals of chess. The book is comprised of twenty-five lessons that can be divided into six major parts:
Chess Basics
Opening Principles
Tactics
Piece Properties
Piece Coordination
Endgames
The material is presented in lesson form so that it can easily be taught to others. Each lesson builds on the previous one and each ends with a set of homework exercises. The reader is also encouraged to visit shulmanchess.com to print out further puzzles to solve. The authors note that the homework is essential to mastering the material and that some of the problems are intentionally challenging to force the reader to think deeply about the positions. However, they do provide hints for the harder problems.
There is a section of 202 checkmate positions, a glossary, an index of themes, and an index of terms. Also, interspersed throughout the text are photos of students from the Barrington, IL school program where the material was developed. This is a good primer on the basics of chess.