David Sklansky - The Theory Of Poker

Four stars. Recommended.

Not a quick read, and not an easy read, at least for a beginning poker player. There's a lot of (admittedly fairly simple) mathematics here, and a lot of statistics. Not a lot of anecdotes. If you play poker for the fun of it, or for its social aspects, this is not going to inspire you to go out and lay your money down at the card table. What it does do is explain how to win at poker, and it explains very clearly that the only way to do that consistently is to calculate odds. That's what the book focuses on, and it does it well.