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Rating: 
Summary: Workbook format guides tactical thinking step by step
Review: Although it was field-tested with elementary, middle school, and high school students, this book is not just for younger students. I'm an adult just beginning to study tactics and I found this workbook format engaging. There are two problems per page, and each problem has a couple of kinds of hints -- a direction line and fill-in-the blank move listings that indicate checks and variants. You can cover up these hints if you want more of a challenge.The sequencing of this book is well thought out. Each chapter focuses on a different kind of tactic (such as discovered check, double attacks, zugzwang, removing the defender, and so on), and the problems often are paired so that once you've solved one problem in 2 moves, the next one is a related problem in 3 moves that might have seemed insoluble before. A final chapter combines all the tactics and asks students to figure out what approach is the best for a given position. It only took me about a week to pass through this book, but I enjoyed filling it in. The enclosed Answer Key was easy to use, as it reproduces the move sequences in their entirety, rather than just providing the answers to the blanks. Worth the money for beginners of any age. After finishing this book, I immediately played a game where I was able to move a knight into a royal fork that was simultaneously a discovered check. I don't think I would have "seen" this possibility before reading this book.
Rating: 
Summary: The multiplication tables of chess
Review: I won't repeat what other reviewers have said, but merely add my advice: please don't start by thinking you can read this book once and then move on.
Let me ask you a question. What's 4 times 8? What's 6 times 7? Chances are you didn't have to "think" about the answers. The numbers 32 and 42 just popped into your head. Right?
That's what this book should be to you.
To get the best value out of this book you need to MEMORIZE these positions until you are sick to death of looking at them. Although you may not encounter them at first: Trust me - these positions will occur in your games.
I suggest going through the book once in 10 days, then take 8 days, then 7, then 5, then 3, then 2 days and finally do all 400 exercises 1 day. By that stage, completing the book in one sitting should take no more than two hours.
This will increase a beginner's rating by 200 points MIMIMUM and cost no more than the price of the book and a month of 20 minute-a-day practice.
Try it if you don't believe me. Or forget my advice, and I hope to play you one day. Prepare yourself for a thrashing. ;)
Rating: 
Summary: Just ok
Review: Just about any chess teacher will tell you that beginners (rating lower than 1600) need to learn three things: tactics, tactics, tactics. Positional knowledge, opening books, and endgame theory won't help you much if you blunder into letting your opponent fork you or if you miss opportunities to do the same. Having said that, this book is a great way to start to practice seeing tactical motiffs (mostly forms of a double attack: pins, forks, skewers, and so on). It is divided into chapters with each chapter focused on a different kind of tactic. After a very brief explanation about what the tactic is, there are a number of exercises in which you have to find the tactic for yourself. There are also hints if you are stuck. I found it helpful to make a little cut-out from some paper to cover the hints and only show the board instead. It is too easy to inadvertently see the hints and ruin the challenge. The book has some very useful advice about how to study: do the first few exercises of each chapter to get an overview of all the tactical motiffs. This will help you start to use and see them in your games. Later, go back and do each chapter thoroughly. Also, chapters are arranged in order of importance; motiffs that occur most frequently are handled first. This book has a couple of limitations. Although it helps you see a tactic, the very nature of an exercise book is that you know one is there. How do you find them in a real game? You have to know when to look for them. There are certain board factors where you are likely to find tactics (an exposed enemy king often means there are great tactical opportunities). This book does nothing to help you realize this. Look at Silman's "Reassess Your Chess" for a very short, but extremely useful discussion of this issue. Also, most of the exercises fall under one of the categories, so you know what kind of tactic to look for, making it easier than a real game situation. The last chapter helps because it is a mix of all tactical motiffs, but there are relatively few of these. Reinfeld's book of 1001 problems is probably a nice supplement in this regard. These are limitations of the book, but not really criticisms. The book does a very good job doing what it is meant to do. The reader should simply realize that there is a bigger picture to look at and supplement accordingly.
Rating:
Summary: A great way to start to learn tactics
Review: Just about any chess teacher will tell you that beginners (rating lower than 1600) need to learn three things: tactics, tactics, tactics. Positional knowledge, opening books, and endgame theory won't help you much if you blunder into letting your opponent fork you or if you miss opportunities to do the same. Having said that, this book is a great way to start to practice seeing tactical motiffs (mostly forms of a double attack: pins, forks, skewers, and so on). It is divided into chapters with each chapter focused on a different kind of tactic. After a very brief explanation about what the tactic is, there are a number of exercises in which you have to find the tactic for yourself. There are also hints if you are stuck. I found it helpful to make a little cut-out from some paper to cover the hints and only show the board instead. It is too easy to inadvertently see the hints and ruin the challenge. The book has some very useful advice about how to study: do the first few exercises of each chapter to get an overview of all the tactical motiffs. This will help you start to use and see them in your games. Later, go back and do each chapter thoroughly. Also, chapters are arranged in order of importance; motiffs that occur most frequently are handled first. This book has a couple of limitations. Although it helps you see a tactic, the very nature of an exercise book is that you know one is there. How do you find them in a real game? You have to know when to look for them. There are certain board factors where you are likely to find tactics (an exposed enemy king often means there are great tactical opportunities). This book does nothing to help you realize this. Look at Silman's "Reassess Your Chess" for a very short, but extremely useful discussion of this issue. Also, most of the exercises fall under one of the categories, so you know what kind of tactic to look for, making it easier than a real game situation. The last chapter helps because it is a mix of all tactical motiffs, but there are relatively few of these. Reinfeld's book of 1001 problems is probably a nice supplement in this regard. These are limitations of the book, but not really criticisms. The book does a very good job doing what it is meant to do. The reader should simply realize that there is a bigger picture to look at and supplement accordingly.
Rating:
Summary: Good Tactics for the Beginner
Review: This book has some good tactics for the beginning level player. A couple of solutions were not the most accurate. Otherwise, a good book!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent overview of tactics
Review: This is a very good introduction to chess tactics. If your lower elementary school-age child has a little trouble, though (and is a rank beginner), I recommend Michael Yip's Checkmate University, Vols. 1 and 2 to start with. These have innumerable, gradually-stepped exercises in tactics, starting with the screamingly obvious. They were just what my child needed to go on to Bain.
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