A Primer to Chess

  Does anyone have any thoughts on Capablanca's Primer for someone of my rating?

What is your rating?

Oughta be good, I should think.

Annotations by Capablanca of his own games are always worth it (final third of the book).

It's an old book. Here's a quote: "Chapter 8. The Middle Game. Very little has been written on the subject. There is a book by Knosko-Borovsky called "The Middlegame in Chess". It is about the only book on the subject that I consider worth reading." That should give you an idea of the era it was written in (evidently not a fan of Nimzos My System written 10 yrs earlier). Old notation aswell, although the book features a section on reading old notation.

It's old but still chock full of chess wisdom. There's extensive discussion of openings. The endgame stuff is probably where the book's value lies, though, as this was Capa's specialty (there's a lot of pawn endgames discussed).

To be honest, I wouldn't recommend it as a first book for a beginner. I read Chess Fundamentals, Capa's other book, as my first chess book and the advice was correct, insightful, but not organised efficiently, wall-of-texty, old notation, oldish english is a bit rambling. The books that worked for me were more modern, like Seirawan's Winning Chess Strategies, and Silman's Complete Endgame Course. I got far more out of Capablanca's books when going back after gaining some knowledge, not because of what's in them, but because of the way they're set out.