Predictions are fun, especially as I won't live long enough to see whether what I'm about to say will come true.This book will join John Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting, Edgar Payne's The Composition of Outdoor Painting, and Richard Schmid's Alla Prima as a must-have in every oil painter's library.There are several reasons:1. Although you might miss them because they speed on by, every major precept for success is iterated and re-iterated: avoid boring shapes, work to make similar shapes dissimilar, bring color, sharpness and contrast to the center of interest (and dial them down elsewhere), drawing and composition are important but not as important as the abstract shapes -- Charles Hawthorne and Henry Hensche would call these 'spots of color' and Monet called it 'capturing light' -- and most importantly, design your painting.(If you want more about why designing is important, search the incredibly rich blog by Stapleton Kearns for "design." Everything Stape says informs the many statements on design by Goerschner; in a nutshell, good paintings are designed. Goerschner often repeats the need to simplify and alter the scene in front you to further the design. Stapleton puts it more succinctly: "Landscape painting is a lie, well told.")2. The paint-on critiques contain hours of instruction. Hours. They repay long study.3. The book contains a largely-failed plein air example, recording two false starts and one mostly-finished work -- it's signed, but it's not one of the best in the book. Each iteration demonstrates more and more effective simplification and design of abstract shapes. No other art instruction book I've seen discusses failure by the teacher, and Goerschner's analysis suggests helpful ways out of bad-day abysses.4. As others have noted, the presentation -- pictures, prose, sidebars -- is uniformly clear, concise and right on target.Not your style?As an aside: it always surprises me to read one star and two star reviews of art books based on revulsion to the teacher's style.This is not a book on how to paint like Ted Goerschner. It's about how to paint.