This book deserves to be re-printed. It's simply fascinating. Did Morphy really anticipate Steinitz? Did masters understand the "principle of early development" even before Morphy? Shibut has many interesting things to say about the evolution of chess, with reference to games and history for support. It's a fairly scholarly work, but not a dry one. I think a club-level chess player could learn a bit about chess from this book, while enjoying the lessons of history.
The meat of the book lies in the chapters comparing Morphy to a)Anderssen and the romantics, b)Steinitz, c)Barnes, who scored more points off him than anyone, and d)modern players (via Reti's assessments). Here you will find dozens of Morphy games with an unusual sort of annotation. Shibut does not give us many lines of variations, though he does sometimes point out tactical shots. More often, he assesses the postions qualitatively, showing us the sorts of plans that Morphy used. He also includes a great many references to the specific ideas and refutations of other authors, often pointing out THEIR mistakes. All of this gives you a sense that Morphy was both far ahead of his time in opening theory, and competitive with anyone alive today tactically.
The games in these chapters are (mainly) real struggles, rather than the dashing brilliancies we are used to seeing from Morphy. Shibut explains, "The effect of such presentations in countless beginner's texts has been to reduce Morphy's games to a collection of fables. Their moral is understood to be something about developing pieces, or the evils of chasing pawns in the opening. Whatever the pedagogical value of such portrayals, the games, so presented, can't help but appear shallow compared to modern grandmaster warfare." Shibut wants to show us what Morphy was really capable of when tested.
Then there is a fun chapter on Morphy's blunders, showing him to be fallible afterall. And there are examinations of his opening and endgame knowledge. After that comes a complete compilation, hundreds of complete (but completely un-annotated) Morphy games. This might be the most useless part of the book, since you could get at least sparse annotation from Sargeant.
One thing this book is great for is the section on games at odds. It amounts to a treatise on how to play such games, analyzing various opening strategies. If you want to play an odds game (eg remove the f-pawn before the game) against a much weaker opponent, I suggest that you take a look.
There are essays on Morphy by Steinitz, Znosko-Borovsky, and Alekhine. And finally, Shibut provides several indices: Morphy's openings, his opponents, and games not involving Morphy. However, there is no subject index, nor endnotes on sources.
After reading this book, I began to wonder how Morphy would fare against Fischer in a King's Gambit, each at their peak. Clearly, his chess was far deeper than I'd imagined.
One drawback: Although the notation is algebraic, it lacks capture (x) and check (+) symbols. This makes it very difficult to follow without a board.