Has anybody ever read this book?

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess Third Edition  By Patrick Wolff.   If so, did it have anything about basic openings?

No, but it sounds like the perfect book for you. (owned)

 You strike me as being a pin head.

Chill out.

More on topic, I doubt it will contain basic openings - it sounds like one of the myriad books that explains how pieces more :)

 It's not, so chill out yourself.

Patrick Wolff is a US GM, and as books for beginners go, this one is fairly well written.  He has brief summaries of the Queen's Gambit Declined and the Sicilian defence.  If you are looking for an opening primer, you might want to try John Watson's Mastering the Chess Openings vol. 1-2 or Gabor Kallai's Basic Chess Openings.

You can view the table of contents at this link.

A little bit of your own research before asking is recommended. There are reviews of this book all over the internet.

Patrick Wolff is a very real player and that book if often mentioned as a top book for beginners. It covers the basics of the opening, middlegame, and endgame.  It is a solid book for beginners. User reviews at Amazon are glowing iirc. 

Thanks to answers 6 and 8.

I guess you can drag a man to water, but you can't make him learn to fish.

amazon  has book and reviews

I've read it, it's good for absolute beginners. By absolute beginner I mean someone who maybe knows how the pieces move but has no knowledge of tactics, strategy, or opening play. For a first chess book it's a good choice but for that sort of thing I usually recommend getting chessmaster instead.

edit: and from what I remember it went over basic opening principles and then skimmed over some classical openings like the Spanish and QGD.

 I was looking for specific answers about openings.

woodshover

What generation uses the term 'pinhead' on a regular basis?

I never found those Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess or Chess for Dummies books to be very interesting. I browsed them at the bookstore just to see if I was missing anything, but the material is very basic and not presented in an interesting way.

I guess they can help a beginner learn some good chess fundamentals, including some standard opening blah that will make you yawn, but if you want to spend money on books that waste like 20-50 pages explaining how moving a Knight works or how to checkmate, be my guest.

If you want general opening advice, just pick up something like MCO or any book that catalogs a variety of openings. They will give you, at the bare minimum, the first 5-10 bookmoves that characterize the opening, and why certain people will be attracted to it. From there, you can choose a few that fit your style of play and buy some specialized books.

Looking back at this thread made me realize Modern Calvin's gone.