Next Books after “How to Win at Chess”

I am about to finish “How to Win at Chess” by Levy Rozman, and it has been a wonderful book! It has gotten me from just understanding how the pieces move to really beginning to understand the game of chess. And now I’m hungry to read more about chess!!

After doing some research, I’ve got my eye on the following four books as potential near term purchases:

Silman's Complete Endgame Course: From Beginner to Master - Silman

How to Reassess Your Chess: Chess Mastery Through Chess Imbalances - Silman

Simple Chess - Stean

Logical Chess - Move By Move - Chernev


I am wondering if you also think these four books would be beneficial at this stage in my chess journey and in what order it would be best to read them. My rapid ELO is currently in the 600’s for reference. Thanks for the help all!

Stean's "Simple Chess" and Silman's HTRYC are both "good" books, but are relatively advanced for your current rating level, so might be quite challenging for you at this time. However Silman's "The Amateur's Mind" and "Complete Endgame Course" should both be appropriate at this point in your chess journey - they're excellent. "Logical Chess Move By Move" by Chernev would also be an appropriate, instructive first annotated games collection.

You can profitably read any of the suggested books in any order. You can also read portions of books simultaneously as you are motivated; i.e., there's nothing to say that you must read and finish one book before studying others.

All of the books mentioned, and more, are commented on here...

Good Chess Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/good-chess-books-for-beginners-and-beyond

I agree with @RussBell. In addition I’d recommend Bobby Fisher Teaches Chess. Like Levy’s book, it uses a minimum of chess notation and relies almost entirely on diagrams.

As a result you don’t need an analysis board or much in the way of visualization skills for those two books, whereas you will need both for the other books you mention.

Thanks all, very helpful advice!

I would stay away from the Silman books, they are more for advanced club players. Simple Chess is good. Logical move is good. I personally think another good book is Best Lessons of a Chess Coach by Sunil Weeramantry . It's also available through the Forward Chess app which allows you to read it and play through it on screen which is a nice feature.

Simple Chess: A great explanation of strategy, making it very easy to understand. You have it on YT as well: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUrgfsyInqNbkyiwPSSBQ6ALkkccKItPE