New Chess Books for Adult Beginners

Dear BCC members,

Please indulge me in a bit of shameless self-promotion.

I recently wrote two chess books for adult beginners, a topic on which I have given free classes at the club for the past 20 years. I published the books a few weeks ago. They are available at the Harvard Book Store, both online and at the brick and mortar store at 1256 Mass. Ave. in Cambridge.

'Chess For Adult Beginners' is 170 pages long, with just under 100 exercises to solve (answers in the back). Covered is specific material I believe every chessplayer in the USCF 800-1200 rating range needs to know in order to improve: visualization, notation, being aware of your opponent's threats, creating your own threats, systematically choosing the best move, tactics, the importance of the center, basic endgame checkmates, and finding your own unique style. I geared the prose towards adults, although high school students should be able to follow it too. 

 'Chess Workbook for Adult Beginners' is 230 pages long, and has 640 exercises, with answers in the back. The workbook covers the same material as 'Chess For Adult Beginners,' and can be read on its own, but has less writing and more problems to solve. The difficulty of the problems range from easy (USCF 800) to moderate (USCF 1000 to 1200) to challenging (USCF 1200-1400, with a few tougher ones thrown in).

Thanks for indulging me. Again, these books are available at the Harvard Book Store (http://www.harvard.com/book/chess_for_adult_beginners/ and  http://www.harvard.com/book/chess_workbook_for_adult_beginners/). Unfortunately, the 'Look Inside' option isn't available online. I'll bring in and leave a copy of each book for the club this weekend, so that members can flip through the pages.

Thanks,
Alex Cherniack