Hello, I wish I could claim to have read all the great books mentioned above.  From the title of this topic, it seems that discussions of specific opening books are not appropriate, and classic books deserve special consideration although great modern works deserve mention too.
Anyway, of the books I have, and have at least partially read
1) My 60 memorable games.  I love the level of annotation.  Not to superficial, not too deep.
2) Zurich 1953.  I have a long way to go, to get through it.
3) Chess Exam and Training Guide by Khmelnitsky.  This book is outstanding.  It identifies areas of strenths and weaknesses so you can target your training better. I always thought I was a strong tactical player, who needed work on strategy and planning.  I learned from this book, that I still need a lot of work on my tactics.   
4)  How to be a deadly chess tactician.  OK so it is not a must read, but it is pretty cool.  When I have completed this book, I am certain I will be a much stronger player.  Among other things, it has lots of great classic chess games, and helps to put you in the shoes of these GM's as they started there tactical magic.
5) Dvorteskey's endgame manual may be must read for FM and up.  It is nice, but a little too slow going for me.  I heard great things about Flear's 2nd endgame book "mastering the endgame." However there is another title "essential chess endings, the tournament player's guide" by james howell - which i just ordered. I think it will fill my need. User friendly endgame book that helps me improve. More updates when I read it....

Thanks for the suggestions about endgame books.  Tactics and defense are my strong suits (i am a pawn grabber).  Endgame is my weakest.  I did in fact already buy the Flear book for $5.


Now to contribute:

A terrific, fun book is:
The Art of the Checkmate - Renaud

Elspringer, both the Karsten & Lamprecht Fundamental Chess Endings and Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual are excellent in their own way.  But I find that thick endgame books such as FCE gather dust on my shelf.  (Well, none of my books get a chance to gather much dust since I am constantly looking for ideas) and DEM is still written for too high a level of understanding.   

I bought the CD-Rom when I won some money at a Las Vegas tournament. My rating had dropped below expert level so I took advantage of my poor previous performance to beat up on some "A" players.  I used it about twice before I realized the book is more useful to me personally.   

This is very much a matter of personal learning styles, but I found the learning program on the CD-ROM to be more awkward than just looking it up in a book.   But I'm a bit of a dinosaur. I look up words in physical dictionaries more often than virtual ones.

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Checked it Amazon and that is indeed the one. I read it when I was ten and often reread certain chapters (still do). The book is one of the very few which lives up to its title.

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Not sure if it is below your level, but I think it depends on the amount of time you already put into the endgame. Averbach wrote a relatively easy book on endgames. I dont know the english title, I assume something like fundamental endgames (dutch title is "What every chessplayer should know about the endgame"). I got by on that book for many years until I got into Flear's book, which has an entirely different aproach. Where Averbach focuses on general rules (eg knight endgames are similar to pawn endgames) and fundamental positions (eg Lucena), Flear goes more into illustrations of these things with their practical problems. His mastering book I find even better, though way tougher.

Other books which I couldnt have done without:
-Practical chess lessons by Euwe (an oldie but excellent when young)
-Mein System by Nimzowitsch (he got me into middlegames as well as through german class)
-An ancient book (from the 30s in its original edition) called "Kombinieren" by Kurt Richter, which taught me a lot about mating nets and other combinational points
-Winning with the french by Uhlmann. I wish my fear of playing "passive" hadnt put me off the french for that long.
-The art of analysis by Timman, one of the best party collections I still use it a lot.

I thought PCE by Chernev was ok, but Basic Chess Endings was better.  However both books suffered from the fatal flaw that as a friend put it:

Its generalizations were too general and its examples were wrong!

Also, with modern computerized analysis, both books are totally obsolete.

Again, I suggest Everyman's Concise Chess Endings as a cheap and usable replacement for BCE and both P.CE's.


By the way, I did read Hanon Russell's review of Flear's book.  It read like so many of Russell's reviews; he pans the book on some sort of organizational grounds, then he gets to the real reason he hates the book.   

The real reason that Russell hates so many modern books is almost invariably that they desecrates his version of Chess History (in capital letters).  Flear's mistake wasn't that he included a bibliography, which he did, but that didn't cite Reuben Fine when he gave a diagram.  Reuben Fine was guilty of some of the same offences, but Russell seems to be able to forgive the great writers of the past.

Russell points out all the things I like about the book, including the tips and references to general rules, but he does it in such a way as to suggest these are bad! 

I'll let you read the reviews, and if possible check out the book in a store or library and see for yourselves.

I know there was at least one negative review of Flear's endgame book, but I liked it quite a bit and use it in lessons.

Of course, Keres' Practical Chess Endings is nice but I had two fundamental problems with it: a) many of the positions were studies and not practical at all and b) Keres seemed more interested in showing off study-like solutions than explaining general principles.  

For Rook endings, Rook Endings (clever title, eh?)  by Levenfish and Smyslov is still a must buy.  If you're about expert strength and want to get better, get Korchnoi's Practical Rook Endings!  I guess Smyslov had stolen his first choice for a title.

For general endgames, if you want save a bunch, you could buy Concise Endgames by McDonald (I think). It's a super-small book that really does what bigger, fancier books don't.  

Again though, I go back to Improving Your Endgame as a good starting point.  Stay away from those encyclopedic books that will only gather dust.  The best of those is Batsford Chess Endings by Speelman, and others.

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There was one by Max Euwe and someone else, I forget who.  Another old book was "Practical Chess Endings" by Irving Chernev.  Mikhail Shereshevsky's "Engame Strategy" is also very good, with a lot of explanatory text.

- Lost Highway