40 Lessons for the Club Player - Alexsander Kostyev
The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings - Reuben Fine
Chess Middlegame Planning - Peter Romanovsky
Strategic Chess - Edmar Mednis
Best Lessons of a Chess Coach - Sunil Weeramantry

For my money, the best GM writing today is Jonathan Rowson. Aside from being a nice kid (yes, I’ve met him, but that’s not why I’m beating this particular drum) he seems to have the right combination of skills to actually create useful material. He’s got the chess knowledge and ability, his academic training gives him some great insights into the workings of the mind and the learning process, and he’s self-aware enough to realize he needs to season the mix with just enough color and humor to make the pills easy to swallow. Chess For Zebras in particular is an amazing book; it’s one of the few recently published books to make my “Desert Island List” — a small pack of books that would insist on taking with me if I were to be marooned on a desert island. I like his writing style so much I went out and bought his book on the Grunfeld, even though I never play that opening!!

Norwood makes much the same point you do. The writer is writing for the professional chess-player, because only a professional or someone trying to become one, can possibly benefit from a four-volume set on the French; the club player, even if he committed the set completely to memory, would blunder after leaving the recommended lines.

What’s needed most on the market are the books like RHM’s How To Open A Chess Game, or Euwe’s The Middlegame, or Pachman’s set on strategy and tactics. Books that use words to explain the principles of the game, and use games and game fragments only to illustrate the lessons they have already explained. There’s got to be material to do that somewhere, or are grandmasters only the ones good enough to make sense of the chaos or lucky enough to have someone at hand who can make it make sense to them?

I think the reason many chess books, supposedly written for the class-player, have so many concrete variations is because the books are really written for the author’s peers. It’s an ego thing. The book is written ostensibly for the improving player, but the author has to show his buddies he really knows what he’s talking about. This situation probably happens more than you would think. It’s also quite contagious. Jeremy Silman, Jon Rowson, John Watson, and others (well, you know, the good writers), prove the exception. Older books (Purdy, Ed. Lasker, Reti, et. al.) seem less concerned with pedantic style, as well.

– Howard Goldowsky