Rabbi Steinsaltz, one of the most respected Talmudists of his generation, has devoted significant effort to introducing the Talmud to a wider audience and encouraging people to actually read it rather than merely read about it. Starting to read the Talmud without some idea of what it is and what it is about would be a very frustrating project, however, and this book is intended to help bridge that gap.
"The Essential Talmud" is divided into three sections, covering history, content and method. The historical section gives a very traditional account of the origins of the Talmud in the oral Torah, and its compilation and editing in Palestine and Babylon. By "traditional" I mean that this is essentially the account that the Talmud gives of itself or that can be filled in from other rabbinic literature. Whether or not this history is completely accurate, it is a significant part of the Talmud's self-presentation and of its authority, and throws important light on both the Talmud's content (largely the teachings of prior masters) and its methods (the obsessive quest to identify the authors of and reconcile the various teachings). In short, it is very difficult to understand the Talmud if you do not understand where the Talmud believes it came from, and Rabbi Steinsaltz's chapters on history are very helpful in that regard. He then goes beyond the Talmud itself to offer a brief history of Talmudic exegesis, and some very interesting information on the printing and persecution of the Talmud.
The second section of the book covers the structure and content of the Talmud. Here Rabbi Steinsaltz offers a very concise summary of the topics touched on by the various tractates of the Talmud. These very brief chapters can do no more than give one a sense of the general subject matter covered, but they successfully provide a general overview. What I found lacking in this section was the complete absence of any citations to the Talmud itself, or any bibliography for further reading on the various subjects. It is easy enough to guess that most of the material on marriage will be found somewhere in Tractates Ketubot and Kiddushin, but it is less easy to determine the source for his comments on the status of women or on ethics and halakhah. Some citations here would have been nice, in case the reader is sufficiently intrigued to want to read more. For example, in the chapter on ethics, Rabbi Steinsaltz summarizes rabbinic thinking on the sometimes conflicting claims of justice ("truth") and compromise ("peace"). I would love to read more on this subject, but I don't know where in the Talmud (or in other commentaries) to look. (For a more detailed look at the subject matter of the Talmud, see Abraham Cohen's "Everyman's Talmud," which has chapters that cover most of the tractate subjects, and additionally pulls together material on other subjects (such as the nature of God, sin and repentance, and so on) that is scattered throughout the Talmud.)
The third section of the book is entitled "Method," and while it is in some ways the most intriguing part of the book, it is also in some ways the least successful. Here Rabbi Steinsaltz attempts to give the reader a sense of how the Talmud operates, what problems it studies, how it approaches those problems, and how it uses logic, midrash and aggadah to achieve its goals. There are many interesting insights here *if* you already have some experience with reading Talmud. The real difficulty is the almost complete lack of concrete examples or actual text from the Talmud to illustrate Rabbi Steinsaltz's points. Overall, I found this to be a good summary of basic points that someone new to Talmud study needs to know. The book is well written and easy to read. The failure to include any extended passages of text is a major flaw, however, and makes it impossible for this book to really capture the "essence" of the Talmud.