What he needs isn't a book, it's a good teacher! I don't think 'negligent' would be too strong a word for the teachers' treatment of this student - no responsible teacher would ever put a student in that position.
Good luck to you if this is really the approach you want to take. But a book is never, ever a replacement for a good, responsible teacher. If you're lacking this much background there is no one book out there that's going to teach it to you.
Point about the majority of them is, they were self-taught and turned out just fine, but also spent a lifetime becoming so and didn't expect to be able to go study sucessfully at a good music school which has a young age limit without having the relevant training...I apologise if I sound harsh, I've just realised how short my tone was above! But, coming from a family of academics, this touches a nerve about bad scholarship... this poor person's been badly taught and now is expecting to be able to go to (by the sound of it) a good music school and just get the guidance he should have had from his tutors from a book. It just doesn't work like that. Intermediate stages of learning are there for a reason - to build experience and knowledge at the same time as repertoire - and you skip that at your own peril. Unfortunately I agree with you above - unless he's a phenomenal talent, I think this is misguided and will backfire on him. I certainly understand about the economics of extra music teachers... but if that's the case, no matter how good the school he's going to is, I wonder if it's really a suitable choice for him - because he's not ready for it.
From reading the first post....The student might go through an entire beginner book series. Just buy them all and plow through that.I ran across a set of theory books by ReSa -- that's the publisher. It's theory geared toward the piano student, not just plain theory.
Topic: good book for "beginner" 