They're not books, obviously, but Karsten Muller's series of 14 endgame DVDs for ChessBase are excellent, in my opinion. A lot of them deal with specific material distributions (Rook vs Bishop or Rook vs Knight, for example), but there are also several exploring more general themes (Golden Guidelines of Endgame Play or Strategical Endgames, for instance), which might be more appropriate for the OP's requirements. His teaching style, involving continual repetition of ideas and principles throughout a DVD - indeed throughout the entire series of DVDs - might not be to everyone's taste, but I found it engaging and effective.

RdC wrote on 02/28/19 at 10:20:52:


Yes, it's that book. His exact words are, in one of the "Three Commandments of GM Tall:"

Quote:

That's good advice for beginners, who often trade off "equal" pieces without much thought and don't realize how final the decision to trade down to a pawn endgame is.

Other high points of the book are the chapter on "mismatches", Soltis' term for the important idea of creating local superiority on one part of the board, even at the cost of going material down globally, and the chapter on queen endings, where we learn that there are two kinds if we're trying to win: Those where our king can find shelter from checks and can stay back and let the queen do the job, and those where it can't and has to come out and join the action.

The book has been criticized for a few analytical errors, for instance in a review here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2IT7JDLM6R8F8/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_t...
John Watson also pointed out a wrong evaluation in a well-known theoretical rook ending in his review. A 2nd edition was published a couple of years later, but I don't know if these errors were fixed there.

The errors are nice to know about (and I guess it's a good idea with many Soltis book to double-check his analysis with an engine or tablebase), but I don't think they should deter anyone from learning the concepts in the book.

Stigma wrote on 02/28/19 at 03:01:21:



Is that the one where he suggests that a very good approach to King and Pawn endings is not to play them if possible? His point being that if for example you miscalculate a winning Rook and Pawn ending, you may well be able to recover to at least a draw. A miscalculation in a King and Pawn ending can be fatal.

I always suggest Grandmaster Secrets: Endings by Andrew Soltis. It was the first real endgame book I read all the way through. It's written in an unusual "socractic dialogue" format with lots of humor, and focuses more on thinking methods than concrete theory.

You could add the short book A Practical Guide to Rook Endgames by Nikolay Minev - it has some good sections on typical tactical and strategic themes. Only in rook endings of course, but they are the most common type of ending.

After that there are other endgame strategy books that could fit on a post-beginner/intermediate level:

Speelman: Endgame Preparation (though occasionally he goes overboard with some crazy chess problems and a difficult chapter on the Theory of corresponding squares - those parts can be skipped)

Soltis: Turning Advantage into Victory in Chess
Mednis: From the Middlegame into the Endgame

... and eventually more advanced books like the classic
Shereshevsky: Endgame Strategy