Reuben Fine's Chess The Easy Way....

Chess the Easy Way by Reuben Fine......

http://www.amazon.com/Chess-Easy-Way-Sam-Sloan/dp/0923891501/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362346941&sr=8-1&keywords=chess+the+easy+way

Can take a Player to about 1750-1950 strength give or take roughly 2 1/2  half perhaps 3 years of hard work and a ton of practice working through it cover to cover alongside his other book Basic Chess Endings (revised with many corrections in 2003 by Pal Benko) will take quite some time the section on openings in the book is quite stale (it was written in 1942) but the principles that Fine teaches remain solid and are timeless for the openings there are newer books with the latest theory that cover that.  Fine won't spoon feed you if your are an intermediate player and want the most from the book you'll really have to work if you want to become stronger and climb!

The book is in descriptive notation not a big deal or an issue for me but it may be for you if your picky about notation.