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Rating: 
Summary: Decent, but could be better
Review: His choice of conventions to use is good, but some of them are not really related to 2/1 (New Minor Forcing, FSF, while excellent conventions, are both things that are fairly independent of 2/1 for instance), so one wonders about including them in this book -- likely he just needed to fill "25 steps". I would also not place Bergen Raises in this book so early, as this hampers the learning of the player that wishes get started on playing 2/1 without making unnecessarily many conventional calls.Also, he has a strange choice of hand evaluation, and really he need not place that in this book. Generally, someone that buys this book will already have some basic form of hand evaluation, and this bould would do better just let each player use his/her own system without imposing "HCP" as the standard for seemingly every bid. On the plus side, it does get you to the point where you are functional in 2/1, and the quizzes are well designed (just having them is a plus). He also does a respectible job warning the reader of potential sticky spots.
Rating: 
Summary: Best 2/1 book I've read
Review: I've read Mike Lawrence's and Max Hardy's books on 2/1 (several times actually) and found them hard to comprehend because their organization was not structured so that my engineering mind could follow them easily. This book, "25 Steps to Learning 2/1", is certainly simplistic compared to the others, but I found that I could understand the "system" as presented here. The detail is certainly sufficient for the beginning 2/1 bidder. It is well organized and flows well from the basic system to the necessary additional conventions. I have purchased about 10 copies of this book for bridge playing friends and they all have found it very understandable.
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