In the foreword of the 基本死活事典 (“Dictionary of Basic Life-and-Death”) by Cho U, published by the Nihon Ki-in in 2014, it says:
死活が苦手な方は、問題を解くよりは、全部暗記するつもりで取り組まれてはどうでしょうか。
“If you are not good at life-and-death, rather than solving the problems, why not try to memorize everything?”
So the tsumego in that book correspond to what In-seong calls “essential tsumego”; positions that you should just know, not calculate everything from scratch every time.
An older edition by Cho Chikun was partially translated as the two-volume “All About Life-and-Death”.
