---------------------------------------------- It's a tricky proposition to do an openings book with dated analysis, and while the publisher takes a shot at pulling it off by providing some contemporary commentary, the two cooks don't really improve on the soup. IM Purdy was a strong player (four times champion of Australia, and the first World Correspondence Chess Champion) and writer (publisher of Australasian Chess Review, Check, and Chess World). Bobby Fischer has spoken highly of Purdy's analytical talents, and Thinker's Press has published several books of his analysis and insight. Those are mostly excellent books that concentrate on his writings and teachings, and aspiring players would do well to check them out.

While Purdy is an insightful author, this book is more about opening lines than concepts, and I think its age shows. The publisher would seem to agree with this concern, because he enlists NM Ronald Wieck to provide running commentary throughout the book, mostly to discuss changes in the theory of the lines since Purdy's day. While this is an interesting choice for a revision method, I don't think the book pulls it off.

The primary problem as I see it is that too often Purdy's conclusions, upon which his opening ideas have been based and discussed in the main text, are shown to be different than modern theory would suggest. While this is understandable, given the age of the analysis, I think it is going to confuse the reader and lead him to doubt the concepts that the author seeks to discuss.

Purdy's book is based on providing an all-purpose repertoire for the black player, and he mostly concentrates on the structure with black having pawns on e6,d5,c5, and b6. This is a sold structure that can arise from the French Defense against 1.e4 and from the Queen's Gambit Declined against 1.d4. There are also a variety of methods for achieving it against many other first moves for white. It is a viable and decent choice for a black player seeking a defensive structure.

Indeed, if the publisher had chosen to include much of Purdy's explanatory text, such as the introductory chapter on Opening Problems and Principles, and the chapter sections that discuss opening play in general, and had gotten another author to interweave his analysis with that of Purdy's that stands the test of time, this might have been an outstanding book. As published, it has too many confusing parts, where players have followed along with Purdy's moves and prose, only to find at the end that the author may have mis-spoken.

My second major concern with the book is the inclusion of a section on the Accelerated Dragon Sicilian (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 g6). While the book mostly covers a solid multi-purpose black repertoire, it veers off to include 31 pages on an extremely sharp line that isn't exactly in keeping with the rest of the suggested repertoire. Further, here a lot of the analysis is dated, and the forcing nature of the lines suggests to me that the black player relying on it for opening preparation will run into many headaches. I've played this variation many times, and I would not recommend it to anybody based on the analysis contained in this book.

My final concern is that the lay-out of the book leaves way too much unused space within the book's listed 192 pages. The book is 6" by 9" but the main column spans slightly less than 3 inches across. There is a second column, of slightly more than 1.5" on each page, but it only contains the footnote sized commentary by NM Wieck. This is a curious and wasteful lay-out. The book could have been compressed by running footnotes at the bottom of the page, as is standard practice.

Indeed, of the 176 pages of the book that use this format (the title pages, table of contents, editor's forward and commentator's preface span the first 12 pages of the book), 52 have no substantive comments in the footnote column, and another 68 have no more than one substantive comment (often little more than one or two lines). Thus fully two-thirds of the book consists of pages with a second column that is entirely or mostly blank (analysis-wise; we do get pictures of the Purdy's, other chess players, and other books published by Thinker's Press). Indeed, I found only 10 pages where I felt the material justified a separate column. As a player who must often rely on the stated number of pages in a catalogue to gauge content, I find that type of lay-out to be at best wasteful and at worst something worse than that.

In conclusion, this book, both because of the age of the material, the manner in which it was updated, and the way that it is presented, doesn't really provide value to most players. If you're a Purdy fanatic or believe that the repertoire presented will be a useful complement to other books, you might want to check it out. Otherwise, I'd shop elsewhere for a "24 hour" repertoire.

I bought this book primarily because I have another Thinker's Press title "The Search For Chess Perfection" and it is one of my favorite chess books. Action Chess is a total disapointment however. The openings it talks about are primarily for black, though it is touted as a complete opening system. The openings themselves are not mainstream and based on old, outdated, flawed logic. The back of the book even admits as much! Don't waste your money. The ultimate "opening system" book has yet to be written.

The reason I first loved Purdy's The Search for Chess Perfection was simple: it brought chess to life for me like other books had not. By comparison, for instance, My 60 Memorable Games by Fischer does nothing for me--the annotations are dry and two-dimensional. As an average player but avid consumer of chess books, I am attracted to books that bring chess to three-dimensional life. Silman's books come to mind as classic examples of this. My System by Nimzo. is perhaps the greatest example of this (with quotes such as "the passed pawn is a criminal which must be kept under lock and key"). I need chess brought to life, because I get bogged down and bored by books that emphasize variations at the expense of explanatory text. Now, to the text at hand. I repeatedly find myself turning back to this book Action Chess. It is pure Purdy, talking to you the reader about opening principles, and about his search to find manageable systems. Whether the lines he selects hold up perfectly to modern analysis or not, the point is that we can follow this journey through opening ideas in a manner that is rich with imagery, enthusiasm, and Purdy's infectious chess excitement. And I enjoy the margin comments as well, by Ron Wieck; they are very instructive. The production is excellent and the book feels very good to leaf through. This is a very fun book, that in the scheme of things deserves far more than one star. The fact for me is that I have over 250 chess books, and for better or worse, this is one I find myself studying quite a bit, while other supposed "classics" go un-opened.

In Reed's explanation of the Christian Coalition's success, he shares with his readers how he operates and lets the average follower see the slick, well-greased workings of the behemoth machine that is the Christian Coalition.

He is up front regarding his views on playing down the more extreme views of the Coalition in order to gain votes and get his zealot followers elected. If one reads his text seriously, it can be quite scary to see how Madison Avenue techniques can work so well with the simplistic thinking of Reed's followers. He is straightforward about how he pimps God to get political power; I especially found interesting his discussion regarding his use of language to sugarcoat his otherwise inflammatory agenda. The book reminds me of Mein Kampf, but with a more user-friendly spin to it.

Any Christian who actually reads his/her Bible will probably find this book as revolting as I have.

The Christian Coalition, a sub-component of the National Republican Committee, attempts to display their "impact" on America. I say this heresay now: That whatever impact, whatever change they have made on America, has intensified their enemies' interests and fascination with the largest Republican organization of America.

That Reed and his followers still claim that the "Christian" Coalition is a non-partisian organization, remains on of the biggest jokes in American politics in the second half of the 20th century.Reed's agenda bears little if any resemblance towards the message of Jesus Christ whose commitment to the poor and outcasts was a threat to the Pharasee's (the Reed's of Jesus' time). How anyone can read the Gospel's and subscribe to this mean spirited agenda is one of the great mysteries of the 1990's.

This book has very little useful material. It is mostly reprinted stuff (that is also of very little use). Even the packaging is bad (it looks as if it was reproduced on a cheap copy machine, with low toner). The five star review that appears for this book is obviously from the publisher/author.

Worst book ever on the subject with a misleading title. A combination of old material and sales brochures.

This book is horrible. It is full of errors (both technical and spelling/grammar). I can't believe anyone would publish this.

I agree with one of the other reviewers on this book. I too purchased this book to help in the starting of a repo service. Although this book contains factual information, it contains very little info for your buck. There are very low quality pictures in this book, lots of wasted space, and over half the book contains no useful info. Save your money on this book. I only wish I had read the reviews before I purchased this book!!!

This was one of the worst books I have ever read! 1/2 the book had poor information and the other 1/2 was just "filler". They actually put a photo copy of a tow truck in the book. If you need to be shown what a tow truck looks like then doing repos are not for you. If I could get my money back, I would! The author wrote a forward, and if what he said was true, he has no business working for a repo agency! from what he said and did to obtain a unit, he could have killed himself of someone else. It actualy takes brains to do auto repo, something this author is lacking! If you know even as little a 10% about the auto repo buisness then you know 10% more then the author. save your money, go and work for an auto repo company and learn it from them.

This book is listed at 240 pages, however, 165 of these pages are glossary and appendice. The author actually wrote only about 55 pages of info. There is also 10 to 15 pages of pictures. They appear to be photo copied pictures. They are of very poor quality.

This book has many spelling, grammar, and typo errors. I usually don't mind, but in more than a few instances the text was not understandable or had to be read numerous times to get the meaning.

By reading the text I get the feeling the author felt this was a huge project and that he just wanted to get it done as quickly as possible. 55 pages of text is not a huge project! How many pages of text do you suppose a college student writes in a year?

If you are buying this book to help you get started in the auto repossession business save your money.

I feel I was ripped off by someone who was out to make a quick buck.

I picked up this book because it was about the land from Santa Fe to Utah via southwestern Colorado. Lands that I live in, have lived in, and haved camped and hiked. Instead I found a book that failed to describe these beautiful and often harsh lands, brought in a cast of characters that added nothing to the nothing plot, and was discriminatory to the Ute Indians. I tried to count all the "cliches" used, but lost interest as fast as I lost interest in the book. The book is labeled a historical novel; try hysterical novel. Glaring errors like building a bridge over the Colorado River in Utah with fir trees. Maybe that's why you can't find any now, they were all used for this bridge. Some books you just can't put down. This book I should never have picked up.

Unfortunately, Ralph Compton's writing is being compared to Louis L'amour but whoever is making the comparison forgot one important characteristic of L'amour: he knew what and where he was writing about. For example, Compton would have the reader believe that the Colorado River in the deep canyons of Utah can be bridged in one-two days with (in reality) non-existent timber and that the Green River seems to run east-west. The dialogue is terribly simplistic. The characters are poorly developed and often inconsistent. The ending reveals no satisfactory (believable?)tension or resolution in the story line which practically dissolves before you can even turn the pages.

Not the best Compton I have ever read, but his Trail Drive series books I highly recommend.

Yet another so-called "...authentic historical revelation..." from some "...lost..." manuscript about Billy the Kid.

For starters, there is no "Fort Sumpter" in New Mexico. Nor is there any evidence that William H. Bonney was out hunting turkeys with William Tunstall when Tunstall was gunned down. In fact, William Bonney was never even known as Billy the Kid until near his DISAPPEARANCE from the scene in 1881 (he was never actually proved dead and no death certificate exists to this day!) and the subsequent publication of Pat Garrett's ghostwritten book which only mythologized the young man further.

Sadly, this book can only add to that vast shelf of total baloney and obfuscation of fact about this era in western history!

I understand that the author, gathered as much information as he could from the people who knew Billy the Kid, and what they had to say about him as a person, and then write what he felt that was going on in Billy's mind at that time. It is not claimed to be the truth, only the the authors idea of the information. I find it to be a very interesting book, and makes good reading as to what might have been. No one can know what was in Billy"s mind, and the author is not trying to imply this, only write a story that is different than most books about Billy the Kid.

The book was used at UCLA recently and I found it not enjoyable to read at all. The examples were very poor and did not seem to relate to the topics covered. Not a book I would recommend.

This was the text used by our class at the State Universityof New York at Buffalo for complex analysis. Most of usfound the text to be too highly condensed. In other words, we were dissatisfied with the time spent on explanations, especially for some of the subtleties that can arise. A fine selection for a reference text, but, somewhat unpleasant as a text for teaching oneself the subject. Admittedly, complex analysis is a difficult topic. The author (a famous mathematician) does very well, actually, in the space alloted. (text by Ahlfors is superior, though)

...The price seemed very modest for the size, and I looked forward to ordering future years's calendars for gifts. Unfortunately, however, it was a huge disappointment, and is going back. The photos are beautiful but a person buying a lighthouse calendar wants to see the lighthouses, rather than a lot of grass with a distant bitsy lighthouse in the center (which is odd, in itself, since the lighthouses I've visited are all coastal). I would have loved this calendar had the photos of the lighthouses been larger, with less attention paid to the grass.

This book is a compilation of three reprints of significant geologic papers first published in 1924 and 1948. While the works offered here are now classics, and it is nice to have them readily available, geology has moved far beyond the information offered here. Thus, the book is of minimal use to people who wish to learn about Oregon's geology as we know it in 2002.
This supposedly scholarly book should include information about the importance and significance of these original papers (reprinted in their original format) and chapters of updated geologic information . But it does not, and the casual and unwary "lay" reader may be mislead.
For example, the 1924 paper by E.T. Hodge proposes that three volcanoes in Central Oregon are the remnant of one massive peak which he dubs Mount Multnomah. But now we know that there was never any such mountain, and that Three Sisters are separate volcanoes with different histories. The other two papers, written in 1948, may be more useful, but they are also understandably out of date, and readers who wish to keep current on Oregon's geology would do well to look elsewhere.

Sarkonak obviously loves his subject and possesses a well of knowledge regarding it, but this book makes for terrible reading. Not really a biography, not really an academic critique, the book wanders willy-nilly over the life of Guibert, sensationalizing it throughout and never producing anything but the most banal of theses (such as, for example, that Guibert attempted to redefine "family").

I, for one, love gossip and sensationalism as much as the next person (perhaps even more), but Sarkonak crowds out the details with embarrassingly terrible explication. One would expect that a writer who includes Foucault and Barthes in his narrative would have read them closely, but there's no idication here that Sarkonak has more than a shallow familiarity with their works. How, for example, could someone familiar with Foucault even imagine suggesting that homosexuality is a genetic trait? Just as deplorable, Barthes' admittedly sloppy "punctum" gets dragged all over Sarkonak's text till it resembles pure schlock.

All that said, I have to confess that I'm glad this book exists. There's so little in English about Guibert that this book fills an important space for the English reader/thinker. It's also painstakingly documented and full of (perhaps even overburdened by) quotations in the original French. Also, Sarkonak's readings of Guibert's photographs are interesting and suggestive, if often off-the-mark.