The good news. This book is excellent value for the money, and is the best written Schaum's Outline I have ever read. It is certainly not excessively mathematical, compared to nearly everything that passes for logic nowadays. Schaum's outlines are seldom written by first-raters in their respective fields. This is a clear exception; Varzi is a first rate contemporary philosopher. This book is an excellent example of modern scientific communication.

The bad news. The book's approach to logic is a bit on the old fashioned side. Much of the material on traditional logic could have been omitted. The book shares a flaw that is sadly all too common: trivial propositions take 20-40 lines to prove. The refutation tree or natural deduction machinery of this and other contemporary books is far too ponderous. This book, like all too many books in the philosophical logic tradition, devotes time to topics that leave me cold, such as modal logic. Meanwhile, it slights or omits topics that fascinate me, such as mereology, the isomorphism between truth functors and Boolean algebra, and metatheory. I like probability and inductive logic and feel that these have a great deal to offer to logic and philosophy, but this book only scratches the surface of these topics. The main comsumers of logic nowadays are computer scientists. It is not at all clear that this book would be of any value to them. On the other hand, this is an excellent book for your typical philosophy major.

This book is an excellent introduction to what I call the
mechanics of logic. If you are interested in metalogic
proofs, like the deduction theorem, then don't look here.
This book teaches the basics of logic. It presents logic
in several different ways: using Aristole's version (strictly
for historical reasons), using Venn diagrams, a Hilbert-style
logic (rules to introduce and remove boolean operators), and
semantic tableaux. Also, it first introduces propositional
logic, then it proceeds to predicate logic. The book has
a peculiar approach that it does not introduce functions (not
predicate functions) until much later.

One of the more interesting chapter covers fallacious arguments.

"Schaum's Outlines Logic" covers more material than you can learn in a single semester course in logic. If you will select what to learn after you buy the book, include the chapter on logical fallacies.

Logical fallacies are noticable in conversation and in your own thinking. You can find fallacies in newspaper articles, political speeches, and your arguments with your loved ones.

My first college course in logic covered the propositional calculus, the final exam involved solving argument forms for validity. This book covers propositional calculus in a chapter, before it goes on to the predicate calculus in two following chapters. You need mathematics skills to handle the pace this book sets, chapter by chapter. You'll find it easier to follow along if you already know some logic. So stick out the earlier chapters to make it through the later chapters. A bonus final chapter gives you a peek at advanced studies in logic, if those might interest you.

The book's explanations are terse. Solved problems and end-of-chapter problems help you learn the material. I don't like that only a quarter of the end-of-chapter problems have solutions you can look up. But the book was great for my needs, so I give it five stars.