Modern Chess Strategy Book

It took me three years to get through this book - not because it's tough going, but because it is a practical manual, that must be read with a chessboard at hand. As such, it is a very satisfying experience for anyone fascinated by this ingenious game. The author is a renowned international grandmaster, and he methodically and exhaustively analyses every aspect of the beautiful game. Needless to say, his expertise extends beyond how to best use individual figures, and the classic openings and middle-game positions. He considers such concepts as dynamic and static advantage, and the personalities of individual opponents. Although the book was written before the advent of the computer chess age, he is able to look forward to some of the challenges that this age has thrown up. As such it is perhaps the ideal summary of the accumulated wisdom of human chess.
But as I stated above, it takes the reader on a practical journey, with dozens of top-level games played and analysed in detail for the reader's edification. There is apparently a larger, three-volume version of the book, enriched by anecdotes from the chess world; unfortunately I bought the more compact, single-volume version, but it has no less merit for that.
Finally I would like to congratulate the translator for his seamless rendering of the original text. As with all quality translations, he is invisible, and the reader quickly forgets the book was actually written in Czech.