Kotov is a fantastic author by classical standards. It is clear that his books influenced many future GMs and that he has a very good chess culture. 'Play like a Grandmaster' is a relatively short book (217 pages) that aims to generalize regarding the most important chess skills necessary to become a grandmaster illustrated through classical examples through the 1980s. As you would expect from classical chess literature, 'Play Like a Grandmaster' is very wordy and you can expect detailed explanation on strategic concepts and typical plans rather than almost exclusively variations (which is all too common in modern books). Relative to other classic authors, Kotov tends to be very analytic and he both attempts to deconstruct the elements and categorize them as precisely as he can as well as detailed variation based analysis when it gets tactical.
Due to how complicated some of the variations are and the underlying assumption regarding the reader's tactical competence (and how strategic this book is), it seems like 'Play like a Grandmaster' is geared toward strong club players (1700+) or stronger (expert/masters). Stronger classically trained masters (2300+) might find much of this book to be review, but there is still merit in quickly reading this to cement the fundamentals. While a lot of this book was obvious for me due to being familiar with many other classic books and games, I still found valuable insight from this book - the freshest example being the 'ambush' tactical motif (setting up a tactic against a target that can't be prevented). As naming patterns can help them stick, I found this to be especially helpful. The target audience is mainly adult players and older teenagers, as is assumed from his section on time pressure and how to cure it (I've found that the very young generally have the opposite problem).
I noticed some flaws in Kotov's precision of categorization and it is fair to assume that there will be some mistakes in analysis given that this was published in the pre-computer era, but it is not fair to judge a classical book by modern standards. And by classic standards, especially regarding improving your chess culture, I can give this book my warm recommendation.
This book follows on from Kotov's previous work "Think Like a Grandmaster". It is a guide to chess-playing for the amateur player. The book covers positional judgement, planning, combinational vision and calculation and practical play - each with many examples.
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