I will start with a disclosure: I know and like the author and admire his play. At 414 pages "The Slav: Move by Move" might seem a behemoth but, there is lots of white space and an average approaching 1.5 diagrams per page. In fact, I could only find one full page of text (79) without a diagram. This is not a "see variation A1b2" opening manual, but rather more like Viktor Moskalenko's opening books (without the photos of players). What you do get is complete games, fully annotated, along with Cyrus' repetoire recommendations. (Hey, kids! Middlegame and endgame instruction from a GM-strength IM for free!) The material (pure Slav, transpositions to Semi-Slav positions are mentioned but not examined) is broken up into 9 chapters; the longest, Chapter One on the mainline Dutch, starting at move 8, is a monograph in itself at 94 pages. Though written from the perspective of a career practitioner of the Black side, there is plenty of gold to be mined for White and Cyrus does a good job of briefly presenting alternatives to his main choices for Black (and these include improvements over known theory.) Cyrus keeps the material interesting with his signature humorous conversational writing style. So, this is definitely not "The Slav in a Weekend" (note to John Emms--I want full credit if you use this idea for a book series) but, if you are interested in taking a bit more time to learn and understand the Slav and if you are interested in improving more than your opening play, then this is the book for you.