I received this book a couple of days ago, and it turned out to be an excellent book. The main idea is that if you learn to tie a particular "style" of fly, you can tie other flies in the same style family, e.g., Catskill style. It makes sense, right? For each style, he shows how to tie the representing pattern with recipes and recommended sizes. Also, the most common sizes of the naturals are in bold, so if you are not sure, you can tie that pattern in these sizes first.

Six variants are shown on the facing page with materials and sizes (could be different from the main pattern). Since they all belong to the same style, you can follow the same instructions to make these variants. Also, the author describes how and when to fish these flies (comparison between the Adams and Wulff was interesting). The goal is to build up a good fly box (actually 2: one for dry and the other for subsurface) by tying files from each style.

It is interesting to see that the flash-back PT and the beadhead version belong to different families. Besides, the main sizes for the flash-back version are 12 and 14 whereas the BH versions are tied in 16 and 18, suggesting they match different things. The book covers many useful patterns, but you might find something missing that you use: SJ worms, eggs, RS2 to name a few (no problem for me as it can be found somewhere else very easily if I need them). It is hard to imagine the egg yarn style of tying with its variant.

The instructions are good, but if you are totally new to tying, you might want another book to compliment this one (something like the B section of the Benchside Introduction to Fly Tying). The first pattern you see is the Adams, but don't be intimidated. You don't have to follow the order.

The only con is it's not spiral-bound.