Martin Greif's book is the definitive photo study of thirties Moderne design. His introduction details how a small group of brilliant designers refined Art Deco into a unique American design style. Greif uses most of the 260 excellent photos to show commercial and residential architecture, a discipline that was easily able to show the spirit of the style. Strangely there are no examples of the stunning Greyhound bus terminals designed by W Arrasmith, hundreds of thses terminals spread the message of Moderne to every city and town across the nation.

Other photos cover transportation and products, though Grief feels a lot of Moderne design in these areas is not much more than clever marketing, adding three or four speed lines to the casing of a product and calling it STREAMLINED. The famous steam trains of the period just covered the basic engine with a sleek shroud.

I think Greif is right to concentrate on buildings, if you want to see products have a look at the lovely 'American Modern: 1925-1940 Design For A New Age' by J Stewart Johnson. This book has 172 photos covering the work of fifty designers of the period.

The book has fantastic photographs, both color and black and white, of the most interesting American worlds fair. The chapters are divided by sections of the fair, such as foriegn participation, transportation, communications. Some of the chapters are reproductions from contemporary sources, including the New York Times. My favorite chapter is the one showing memorabilia- a real treasure for the worlds fair collectors! The photographs are wonderful, showing interiors and exteriors, day and night shots, candids and official photos, color and black/white. The photographs are worth the price of the book, but it is well written, informative and interesting.For anyone interested in the 1939 New York Worlds Fair, this is the best!

I have a 1901 rating as a result of playing in three tournaments. I suspect my actual playing strength to be at about 2200. It is my feeling that this style of puzzle book (Endgame) will help my over all playing strength / tournament results; as well as shore up some of my weaknesses in the Endgame (an area of the game a lot of players neglect).

These puzzles are NOT easy, but are printed two to a page, which makes it easier to analyze then some others puzzle books. However, some of typeface, as well as the ink density, make it hard to figure out which are the White pieces and which are the Black pieces.

I lost this book once and actually went out and bought it again - it's that good. Along the same lines as the above book, but different, is Troitsky's (sp?) book "Tactics In The Endgame". You want to get better? Studies these two books - you'll notice result right away, I promise.

Chris Rondthaler

I recently purchased a chess set on Amazon.com. I wanted to re-learn the game and its different nuances. What a better way than trying to solve these puzzles! These puzzles focus primarily on the end-game, and you have to make the moves for both white and black. If you want to improve your chess game, I would recommend that this be one of the first places you stop.

There are 200 puzzles (chessboard diagrams with the pieces strategically placed). You are told how many moves are needed for the White chess pieces to earn a "mate" over the Black pieces, and then (of course) you attempt to solve the puzzle by figuring out which moves it will take to accomplish the feat. Some of these puzzles are easier than others.

The solutions are listed in the back of the book. Many of the puzzles have more than one solution, and when this is the case, the author uses asterisks and footnotes listing possible alternative solutions.

I suppose this book could have been better if there were brief discussions of the solutions, but in all fairness to the author, that's not a realistic expecation for a chess puzzle book -- especially for a book with 200 puzzles (if you like that type of didactic commentary, read chess manuals with plenty of examples).

modified Descriptive (English) notation. [EN]

Excellent and funny book with a lot of illustrations. I purchased it about 10 years ago in USA with Jim Kepner's "Becoming a people..." and Terry Boughner's "Out of All Time". They are very nice and intersting volumes. In these books, however, we can find only the occidental people with few exceptions ; e.g. Mishima Yukio, Suleiman . Though English has become nowadays as if a kind of LINGUA FRANCA , I don't understand why the English speaking people still have such a narrow-minded thinking. I'd like to read more international, global and comprehensive books.

PS : Noel I. Garde's "Jonathan to Gide : The Homosexual in History" also is a very intersting book of "The Gay-people's List" , although it is on the westerners including some Oriental men like Abu Nuwas and Saladin.

More negative points than positive: I cannot really recommend this book for any reason.

Balance sheet:

+ 200 chess reasonably good chess puzzles

0 Introduction could have been a page longer: it's rather on the terse side as it is.

- Solutions are in old-fashioned descriptive notation

- Not all solutions are given

- Problem authors are not acknowledged

A chess player may not bother about the last point: indeed, any too clear mention that these Puzzles actually are composed problems will probably scare him off for good. The introduction does mention the fact, but it doesn't draw much attention to it.

To a chess player, the descriptive notation and the lack of full solutions will surely be more important. The very first puzzle illustrates the second problem: the intended solution begins with 1. Qd1, but there's another one beginning with 1. Se4+, a move rather more likely to be found by an ordinary chess player than the other one.

The player who finds the solution beginning with the knight's move will find himself deserted by this book: and as this may happen already in the very first Puzzle given, it seems likely that many readers will put the book aside quickly.

There are several other such multi-solutioned puzzles in the book: a random check indicates that of 20 tested puzzles, 4 were faulty (puzzle 1, 6, 36, and 175). I suspect this is not representative: usually about 10% of old problems in a collection turn out to be faulty in some way (multiple solutions, or no solutions).

Thus, the editor has to some extent failed here: either to select such problems that have only one solution, or to give *all* solutions to such problems that have more than one.

The second type of possible reader, the problemist or problem solver, will probably be more bothered by the lack of attributions and award information.

The introduction says that the puzzles are "culled from award-winning chess problems from the past", which makes it so much more important to indicate their history. Actually, it's been standard practice for about 80 years that problems should be correctly attributed to their authors.

Problem No. 3 may be recognized as one composed by Samuel Loyd, as may Puzzle 17. I also find a problem by William Pierce, one by Cyril Pearson (both English problem authors from the 19th century), and one by Kohtz and Kockelkorn (a German duo from the same time). I'm much puzzled why the editor has chosen to omit the authors names -- unless it is that including them would be too much of a hint that this is a collection of chess problems, and so scare away most prospective readers.

It's also standard practice these days when problems are reprinted to give information about where the problem was taken from. In the 19th century this was more an exception than a rule, and as the problems are from that time, it may be that the lack of source information is only a reflection of the practices of that time. The fact that the solutions include information about discovered checks is another indication that book is a bit out of touch with modern problem publication.

The conclusion is: the book is not really good enough for ordinary chess players (no modern notation, incomplete solutions), and it's certainly not nearly good enough for the problem solver (no author names, no awards, and no source information).

I feel uncomfortable giving this book even one star, but Amazon won't accept anything lower...

Unless you are a world chess champion (or Doctor of Chess Science), you will find this book intriguing, helpful and "an edge". Will assist most beginner to above average players, especially those interested in classic moves. Grab a copy and carry it around with you.

The Idea was good but the puzzles and the answers do not match!!!!!!!

Any chess enthusiast lucky enough to own this book will find the moves and the answers in perfect harmony - takes seconds to find the answers and it is brilliant in its simplistic format