Tratado General de Ajedrez

For those who can read Spanish, I highly recommend the four-volume Tratado General de Ajedrez by the late Argentine master Roberto Grau. Although Grau died in 1944, this book has been reprinted many times since then, and I recently came across a $10 copy of volume 1 on the internet here. I think these four volumes (over 1500 pages all told) have everything you need to go from rank amateur to expert.

Volume 1 ("Basic Principles") starts off at the very beginning with the movement of the pieces, simple mates, and elementary tactical concepts like the pin. It also has a great number of short games to work through and many exercises. Volume 2 ("Strategy") goes through a detailed discussion of strategy - the fight for the center, etc., and attack and defense concepts (e.g., the sacrifice on h7, etc.). There are also a good number of classic grandmaster games, analyzed in a great deal more detail than the games in volume 1, with detailed text explaining the ideas behind a position as well as lengthy analytical variations. Once you have mastered the material in the first two volumes, I would be amazed if you did not have a rating in the neighborhood of 1600.

Volume 3 ("Pawn Formations") and Volume 4 ("Advanced Strategy") -- which I have not finished working through -- look to have everything you would need to get from 1600 to expert territory (2000). I would rank them on a par with Dvoretsky's series in terms of pedagogical quality (but with lower expectations regarding the reader's expertise, as well as with more analytical mistakes).