To be a real knitter who can tackle any project, it helps to have a good encyclopedia of stitches at your disposal.  Then, when you encounter an unfamiliar stitch you only have to look it up to learn it.  This is such a book.

There are 300 stitches in here covering all the types of knitting that I can think of—maybe true experts know of others but here are enough for most needs.  The stitches are grouped into families such as knit and purl, lace, intarsia, etc for easy reference, and each page is packed with information.  At the front of the book you can find the inevitable (and helpful) guide to how to get the best out of the book and interpret the various space-saving signs on each page.  Every stitch is graded according to difficulty, with a unique number and photographs of how it looks, as well as a chart to enable you to work a sample.  There is a fold out flap showing what the various abbreviations mean for easy reference, and at the back a section on "knit know-how" with project ideas, helpful hints, and even a brief refresher course on how to cast on and do basic knitting.  This is not however a book for beginners, but rather for improvers who have done a fair bit of basic projects and want to branch out into more advanced techniques.  If this is you, then you will find this excellent book very useful and remarkably exhaustive for its modest size.