Not surprisingly, this book is very similar to book one in this series "Tesuji for attacking," in layout and style. Both books I enjoyed and feel I benefited from reading. To be honest though, when I first started this series I read it as bedtime reading and the density of the topics covered put me to sleep in less than ten minutes.

This book is well thought out and the discussion is incredibly thorough. Fujisawa divides the chapters based on the kind of technique, e.g. managing stones lightly or resisting using ko. In each chapter there are problems taken from classical collections or joseki shapes. There are usually three diagrams, more or less - the commonplace way to play, the tesuji and a possible a possible way for the opponent to resist (which may be slightly successful or fail completely). There are also many examples of tesuji in context from pro games which are sometimes difficult, but very interesting.

I found the commentary Fujisawa provides "if white tries A black can fight back with B, C etc..." to be very helpful. I learnt a lot just from reading his comments. I have only read the first two books in the series so far and am waiting for the others to be translated. I will have to re-read them several times before I can take it all in I think. After reading this book I felt like I had a much better understanding of how to manage stones lightly and I started to really understand the proverb "act locally, think globally." This is a very good book, but it is quite difficult and I would only recommend it to low kyu or dan level players.