Good overall book

I'm not new to chess, but new to trying to play it well, and right now I don't play very well.  My weak points I think are that I don't see moves ahead very well, and sometimes I tend to play too fast.  I'm thinking of asking for a chess book for Christmas, so I was wondering if there are any books that give a good overall teaching of openings, middle and endgames, tactics, etc... I currently have Silman's "Complete Book to Chess Strategy" but not sure that's the best out there.  Thanks.

An amateurs mind by silman is a great book

Purdy's "Guide to Good Chess" is maybe hard to find but an excellent book!

If you're stuck looking for books, abebooks usually has them somewhere and at a decent price, it's where I get the majority of chess books from. If you don't mind spending a while going through games on a board (ie points illustrated by lots of real positions) My System by Nimzowitch is a good investment. I like his style, and he is really in-depth about what he's trying to get across, but you MUST go through the moves included in the chapters, and probably all of them, to really ingrain the knowledge. I'd also consider Lasker's chess manual (although his style is a bit weighty to read through), and (although they're seperate books and maybe not quite what you want) any of Seirawan's Winning Chess books give good overviews of the specific areas. Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess. It's really for slightly more advanced players, however, I got it early on when I was trying to improve my chess, and it really helped. If you treat it as something that can give you a good grounding, and then as something that you can keep going back to every so often to reread, then it will prove invaluable (although it's really more middlegame-oriented).

 I just heard from Bob Long that Guide to Good Chess might be re-printed in 2009. Great News!

I actually was thinking of Seirawann's Winnign Moves books, but someone said the "Openings" book didn't cover the English opening, which sounded like a pretty important opening in my search.  I migth try "The Amateur's Mind" though, I've heard nothing but good about that book.

What about Nunn's "Learn Chess Tactics", and the two Polgar's books "A World Champion's Guide to Chess" and "Chess Tactics for CHampions".  Too advanced?

These books are "A OK", just try to understand how the pieces moves in combinations with each other for the attack.It's a start, Purdy's Guide to Good Chess is also good infact i also have his 1-4 Vols on Purdy's Fine Art of Chess Annotations.Understand the basics and don't just skim the books, understand it you'll be surprised as to how much youve learned  later.

agreed

I'm in much the same position as yours, and while there are a ton of excellent books, I've gotten a lot of wonderful help from Dan Heisman articles in ChessCafe.  His Chess Nook articles are fantastic and will keep you busy for a long time.

In the way of books, I just bought Zuke Em, The Colle-Zukertort Revolution by David Rudel and have really enjoyed it, and my play has improved noticeably.

Mike