Opening

Even if you're willing to believe that these two men are channeling the thoughts of 3 spirits, at the very least, these spirits are not particularly inspired. This book is basically a long-winded over-explanation of a familiar theme in self-help books and New Age spiritualism: Everything happens in your life because you subconsciously want it to and you can consciously channel that internal energy to attain more desirable and focused goals. With this follow-up book, Fengler & Varnum have now stretched this simple idea into about 500 pages overall. If you read Hernacki's "Ultimate Secret To Getting Absolutely Everything You Want" you'll get the same idea in 400 fewer pages and save yourself $25 to boot. Or just read "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" again and get the same basic message.

I read Manifesting Your Heart's Desire by the same authors. So I decide to try this book and absolutely loved it. Their style is so easy to read. The book is very clear with lots of examples. A must read for the more difficult manifestations like relationships, prosperity, and health. My hat is off to the authors on this one.

I just love all the personal examples taken from average people who are on the spiritual path. This book shows how these people handle difficult things in their life while being both in the physical world and on the spiritual path.

This book provides a wealth of clinical examples of EMDR, but doesn't provide any information about what EMDR is or any understanding about how it works. The author admits that she is "not trained as a cognitive-behaviorist" and thus rationalizes her lack of explanation of the theory of EMDR. The author is also an EMDR trainer, which calls into question her choice of case studies. EMDR is a patented method (as the little "r's in a circle" keep reminding us) and it would seem that the author thus has a conflict of interest in selecting which case histories are described. The cases are presented in a gee whiz style that undercuts any sense of objectivity, and as a consequence, the books ends up sounding like a long info-mercial. Too bad, because EMDR is an interesting therapy, but may benefit from a more objective approach than what is given here.

This book was just what I needed to learn about EMDR. She brought everything to a level very easy to comprehend. Many case studies. Just an all around excellent read!

I frequently recommend this book to clients who are interested in EMDR. It is very readable and conveys some of the power of EMDR. I find it more client friendly than the Shapiro books which are also good.

It is just as well that this book is out of print. It might save you some money. This 100-page book consists of 4 chapters, of which the first is a historical perspective of dubious relationship to the subject matter. The remaining three are "connected" by the common "theme" that the demonstrated play takes place on the queenside, but the contents could easily fit into any number of other books.

If you are looking for some GM revelations or strategic insights into "Attacking the Queenside", forget it. The closest this book comes to that is the beginning of chapter 2 with the quote, "The main aim of a queenside attack is an invasion behind enemy lines by the major pieces, to the back two ranks where the main strength of the defense is normally situated. The invasion of the powerful rooks either obtains a material advantage or sometimes results in a switch over with extraordinary speed to an attack on the King."

Now, anyone with any playing strength or experience already knows that the second sentence is true. And that same experience may cause you to question sentence number one.

In fact, the premise is totally abandoned at the conclusion of chapter 2, when the author takes up the subjects of pawn play and pawn promotion. The idea of rooks on the seventh rank just seems to disappear into the fog.

As it happens, I think the illustrative games are really excellent examples of the ideas under discussion. For that reason alone, I give the book three stars. So, if you feel compelled to search out this book, just be forewarned - it has no other redeeming qualities.

Shashin's book is definitely worth having. It is written in an engaging style, with far more text than variations. It emphasizes attacks on the queenside, thus filling a gap in chess literature. I bought this book because I have several books which emphasize attacking the kingside, such as Attacking Technique by Crouch, Attacking the King by Walker, and, most recently, Attack with Mikhail Tal, by Damsky and Tal. Supposedly Tal died before completing the latter book, so an expected chapter or part on queenside attacks was never written. This is what prompted me to pick up the Shashin book, Attacking the Queenside, and I have been delighted with this book. There is a strong emphasis on history, with instructive examples involving Morphy, Staunton, Alekhine, Capablanca, right up through Botvinnik, Karpov, Kasparov, and others. The book is thus a nice historical perspective on queenside attacks, as well as being a very well-written instructive manual. This one is definitely worth getting, if you can find it. For me, a club level type player (ICC 1500), dealing with advancing queenside pawns is one of the most confusing aspects of chess. This book presents a lot of examples of how to do this. Another nice feature is that the author freely quotes from the writings of great players. I especially like this, because often such writings are unavailable. As you can see, I really like this book. It is not flashy, and has a very dull cover and yellowing pages (like most Batsford books from the early '90s), but it deserves very high marks on substance, and I highly recommend this engaging work!

This book is a must read for players once they are playing on the full board and have reached 20-25kyu. On my first read my strength improved by 3 stones.

This is a good book on opening theory of Go. However, it's not a first book on go.

I was quite amazed when I got this book. The presentation at amazon.com said it used 'revolutionary' new layout to present the ideas behind the openings. It turned out the revolution consists of a systematic listing of issues like "what is white's strategy", "what is black's strategy", "is the opening tactical/positional/dynamical". Is there really any other way of presenting openings? If it is indeed true that this is the first book to employ such a systematic presentation of ideas and thoughts, it clearly defends its label as revolutionary.

Having said that, the format of the book is too small. Within the hundred or so pages, there is not enough room to elaborate on the ideas. First, not enough openings have been evaluated. Second, the evaluations merely consist of lists of moves. I also read Jerry Silman's "How to Reassess your Chess", and I would really have liked to see the various positions evaluated with respect to Silman's imbalances.

All in all, I think the largest impact of this book will be that other authors get ideas on how to present and compare ideas in systematic manners in future books. Or it may be that I am just not ready for the material presented here.

The opening phase of chess receives strong attention in Mastering The Opening, a superbly presented "how to" title devoted to dealing with every major opening. Chess players will enjoy the attention to numerous thematic games and a layout which requires basic chess knowledge but still proves easy to understand.

I've read through this book a number of times. It is full of many interesting morsels of information -- and, of course, it is poorly researched. So many of the claims and stories in this book need to be researched by the authors themselves (I've actually had to do some of the research myself). But give Dongo credit for getting this information into the public realm.

It's a New Age-metaphysical type of book, so be warned.

This is one of those books that is a must read for anyone interested in high strangeness phenomena. I doubt that there is another book like it. It is entirely centered in the Sedona, Arizona area.Some of the material is really weird in a strangeness sense but you are impressed by the honesty of the authors and its easy to see that they themselves were grappling with a way to present and explain their experiences and findings.

I think the "Opening for White" series, including the five books based on Kramnik and the newer ones based on Anand, are spectacular, wonderful books. But, for no apparent reason, this book based on Karpov's black repertoire (at one time) is not nearly as good. A big part of this is the lack of materia. Whereas, the Kramnik series was five volumes, this one prsents an entire back repertoire in one volume that is only around 200 pages. This means that many variations are not found in this book. It is still pretty good, but very disappointing compared to the excellent volumes that make up the remainder of the series.

Learning how to play in the Opening is one of the most important, yet difficult tasks that every chess player is facing. If you are a beginner, there are better books on the market for you, including the "Starting out..." series. But those who are ready to go beyond the general opening principles and a couple of opening moves will find this book very helpful. It addresses the following positive issues:

1.Complete selection for Black covering ALL White first moves,
2.Very qualified author - FIDE ex-champion A. Khalifman
3.Extremely good source - games of Anatoly Karpov
4.Repertoire approach - when the games are sorted into a variation trees and somewhere earlier enough the moves finish and the author explains common strategies and offers suggestions.

Despite short lives of many opening books due to extensive development of the modern chess opening theory , this book will serve middle range players (1400-2200) for many years, because it is plan-oriented.

Good Luck!

Copyrighted by me

I have a well thumbed copy of this book. It has been the foundation of my repertoire for a number of years. I am no pro, just a better than average club hack. The strength of this opening system is that it is solid from both sides of the board. One is not likely to fall apart by move 10. On the other hand it is not an exhaustive system. There is not much against the Dutch. There is not a plan against early Benoni systems. As black the Queen's Gambit Tartakower system is great. The Caro-Kann requires considerable theoretical knowledge. Against prepared opponents one has to be on toes against the Panov-Bottvinik attack, the multiple advance systems, and the grind of the main line Petrosian Smyslov system. I have argued with Smith and Hall, but I keep coming back. I have won many games by playing solid until the other person self destructed. I reccomend it as a good foundation repertoire for average cautious players like me.

Well written. Emphasizes piece play over complex variations,and contains many forcing variations to keep you in familiar teritory(and your opponents out of comfortable book lines).The one weakeness is that ,despite the book's cliams, the variations for white are not a complete system and must be suplemented by other sources. As a weekend chess club warrior, I found the book to provide an excellent opening repetoire for black, and I enjoyed the large number of well annotated games which provide good insight into the typical middle and endgame possitions that arise from these openings. For a class D,C,or B player this book would be a good addition to your chess library.

I purchased this book to learn more about the functions of the right hemisphere of the brain. It was disappointing to have a sermon from a self-proclaimed agnostic advocating that religion be subordinated to "science". Robertson acknowledges throughout the book that there are ways of knowing beyond logic (as processed by the left brain). The science part is informative and helpful. It's his added editorializing that weakens the book. He concludes it with a push for a "new religion" to emerge, some odd mixture of various existing religious. His argument indicates his religion is science, which contradicts what he argues elsewhere in the book, about different forms of knowing. He lumps all religions together, seeing them as essentially being all alike, with Buddhism being his slight favorite. I learned new information on the way the brain works, however I had to tolerate a lot of intolerance to my Christian faith along the way.

I've always been fascinated by the inner workings of the mind and how one can improve it. This book is a fascinating exploration on how the mind really thinks. It's illustrated in extremely simple language. Interestingly post reading the book I came across other people who use a similar concept. Moreover I have been reading books on memory etc. primarily by authors such as Harry Lorayne, and there too I find the emphasis on thinking in visuals. If you visualize it you remember it. The book does cover memory also to a certain extent but the other coverage is awesome. This book is a definite yes if you want to learn how your mind works and how you can help yourself think better. I wish I had come across this earlier in life. I'm definitely on the lookout for more of such work.

The Wilkes-Barre Attack in the Two Knights is one of the most complicated and devasting counter attacks in the open game. Yakov Estrin was a leading Russian writer on the Two Knights as well as other systems. In 1977, he wrote a book on the Wilkes-Barre called the Traxler Attack for Chess Enterprises. Traxler was a European who had played maybe 5 or 6 games with the opening. Kenneth Williams was a brilliant correspondence player with the Wilkes-Barre Chess Club who along with other members of that chess club did a tremendous amount of work on the opening in the 1930's that was published in Chess Review. Estrin's name change infuriated him and he proceeded to destroy the first edition of Estrin's book with his analysis, so much so that the 2nd edition (if there was one) was renamed the Wilkes Barre. The book is in algebraic, the typesetting is horrible but the analysis is absolutely brilliant. Williams was a Correspondence master of the first rank whose business interests did not give him time to play over the board. Great content but rotten typesetting!

That I know of, there are but 2 books on the Wilkes Barre. This one and the one by Estrin. This one mentions Estrin's book and picks some good and bad points made by Estrin. Having not read Estrin's book, I don't know but this book will bring surprise and horror to your opponent's faces.