This book is an excellent guide to many of the variations of the king's gambit. One of the attractive features of this book is that the author actually plays the opening in GM level events and displays a real passion for the opening.

The selection of illustrative games cover a wide period including a few early games up to the most modern lines.

I found myself "chomping at the bit" to go out and unleash the KG on someone after reading this book. I have had pretty good results and a great deal of enjoyment.

The only reason that I gave this book 4 stars is that it starts with 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 - the king's knight gambit. So if you like the bishop's variation on move 3 look somewhere else.

The book also covers the declined variation and other offbeat tries such as falkbeer, schallop, nimzovich, etc.

All in all a very good book. If you find a used copy, grab it!

If you like exciting chess,you should play the King's Gambit,and if you play the King's Gambit,you should buy this book.It will make you better prepared in this sharp opening than most opponents,and in my case it gave me immediate results(I have been playing the King's Gambit in tournaments for 2 years,and it is by far my most successful opening) Contrary to popular opinion,the King's Gambit is basically sound,and it is certainly a great psychological weapon.This book has excellent analysis and Gallagher's writing is very easy to read.I highly recommend this book

I enjoyed reading this book with my son last year. It tells the fictitious story of a poor boy in France who because of his brave actions to help King Louis IX(the Good)ends up as a page in the king's castle. There he meets Vincent de Paul, who is sponsored by a rich noblewoman to feed and minister to prisoners in the Bastille prison. There the youngster is confronted with how wicked people can become, and how violent. De Paul teaches the boy the humility that all Christians are called to, and he sees what results when unlovely people are shown the love of Christ. This year I will read this book with my second son, because I want him to learn about this humble servant of God.

I love the shape and cover design of the book--an arched stained glass window. On the Internet, there is an online community of religious leaders called Ecunet ...... A popular topic on Ecunet is Eculaugh, "the place for good clean religious humor." Judging this book against the Eculaugh standard, most of the jokes are clean, many of the jokes are good, and all of the jokes are religious. Catholics, Protestants, and Jews are equally picked-on in this compilation of religious humor. If you can laugh at religion and overlook the occasional "R-rated" joke, then you will enjoy this book.

This book is worthless because :
- it offers little insight into Avery's genius
- it's short on the man's biography
- it focuses too much on the cartoons
- a large portion of it is made up of interviews with Avery and others; it's easy to write books that way, using text that's already written
- every picture is in black and white; not a single one in colour; would you like to watch Avery's cartoons in b & w ?
- it is printed on mediocre paper; when you're reading a page you are very much aware of the pictures printed on the other side of the page
- it's grossly overpriced

Written more than a decade before "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" made it okay for adults to enjoy animated cartoons, Joe Adamson's labor-of-love tribute to cartoon pioneer Tex Avery is a must-have for any scholar of animation. Containing perhaps the only extensive interview with Tex Avery before his death before 1980, the book looks back on the illustrious career of a shy, quiet man whose only ambition was to make people laugh. Walt Disney and Chuck Jones are the two most famous names of the Golden Age of cartoons, but they both owe a debt to Tex Avery. In addition to the personal look at Avery's life, the book contains a complete filmography of Avery's theatrical cartoons, plus interviews with the people Tex worked with over the years. While the 1996 book "Tex Avery" by John Canemaker provided a look at the more tragic side of Avery's career (as well as a wealth of background and behind-the-scenes material), Adamson's book is still the definitive look at the fun-loving, innocent personality of the creator of Droopy Dog, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and the man who broke the shackles of "realism" in animation by declaring, "In a cartoon you can do anything!"

This is not the best or worst from Stephen King based on the novels of his that I've read. The idea is great and the story has an evil undercurrent running through it which is a trademark of Kings.

The basic story is how lawyer Billy Halleck and two others from his town cross a gypsy elder who then lays a different curse on each of them. Billy's curse is that he just keeps getting thinner, regardless of what he eats, every day he loses a few more pounds. The two other townsfolk have horrid curses inflicted on them, I don't want to give too much away but the reason for the skin disease is a bit confusing to me.

The curses themselves are absolutely disgusting and if King's idea was to make me feel a bit ill, it worked. Only thing is that it detracts from the enjoyment of the book. I prefer the scary approach to his novels. He also has a tendency to paint his main characters with flaws that leave you unsure as to whether you should hope they get out of the predicament or are happy for them to meet the fate they deserve. Once you meet the gypsies and find they are just as despicable as the cursed characters the book just becomes a race to the end to find out what happens. You don't end up barracking for anyone.

One character I did enjoy was the Ginelli, the New York mobster who comes to save Billy. He has an honesty that the other characters seem to lack but his motivation for getting involved in the situation as deeply as he does is unclear, and his fate is predictable.

Plenty of shocks and horror but it appears to be one that was done with less care than many of his others. However it is comparitvely short so if you are a fan and don't want to commit to one of his lengthy efforts then this is worth a try.

Of the five books that Stephen King published under the pen name of Richard Bachman, three of them involved making the numbers of the chapters part of the story. In "The Running Man" there was a countdown as the game progressed while in "The Long Walk" the miles added up. In "Thinner" each chapter gives us the weight of the protagnoist, Billy Halleck, as it plummets relentlessly down. As with his classic short story about smoking, "Quitters, Inc.," King took an American obsession and turned it into a nightmare come true. The cataylst for Billy's weight loss is that old chesnut, the gypsy curse. While driving one night Billy is, uh, distracted by his wife and runs down the elderly daughter of Tadzu Lempke, the leader of a band of gypsies who have invaded the town. Billy is a lawyer and his friends, the judge and police chief, make sure the woman's death is ruled an accident. But before Billy can celebrate, Tadzu touches him and utters the one word curse: "Thinner."

What makes "Thinner" the best of the Bachman books is that King works a whole bunch of other elements into the story. Unlike his earlier Bachman efforts with tended to be one note (e.g., walk till you drop), "Thinner" pours on the fun. Billy's family and doctors are overjoyed by his weight loss at first, but then it continues at an alarming rate, even as Billy spends all of his time eating everyting in site. They insist it is a psychological problem, or perhaps physiological, but a gypsy curse is beyond their ability to believe. Not so for Richie Ginelli, a mobster who is one of Billy's most grateful clients. Ginelli is old school and his mother knows about gypsy curses, so Richie is more than willing to fight fire with fire. Tadzu curses Billy. In an act of desperation Billy proclaims the Curse of the White Man from Town. Richie does everything he can to make that curse come true in an effort to force the old man to "take it off."

That campaign is what elevates "Thinner" above the rest of the Bachman books. In the world of Stephen King fighting back is always the most difficult part of the equation and I like the fact that this time around the effort is grounded in the real world. The gypsies have curses but Richie has automatic weaponry and a cunning honed in the underworld. The end result is that as you read "Thinner" you become open to the possibility that Billy might get out of this one alive, if only they can stop Tadzu's granddaughter Gina with her slingshot and ball bearings. There are other complications in Billy's life that add to the fun of the denoument, such as whatever is going on between Billy's wife and his doctor, so that once King gets the ball rolling it keeps picking up speed as it goes down that hill. We are not talking great fiction here, just a story that gives you second thoughts over every trying another diet.

So many people in today's world want to lose weight and do, but what happens when you are losing too much weight at a deadly rate? It all started when Layer, Billy Halleck, the main character hits an old gypsy woman with his car and kills her. Shortly after this accident, Billy and his wife, Heidi, see an old gypsy man. This man brushes Billy's face and whispers the word "Thinner." From this point on Billy loses more and more weight that starts to scare him to death. He just might die if he doesn't find the cure in time. Will he survive? This book is pretty good over all and I would give it four stars. Stephen King has written some good books including Roadwork, Carrie, The Shinning, and The Green Mile. I would say that Thinner was one of his better books. The book is a little slow in parts but it interesting most of the time. I would recommend it to all readers, because I though the ending was really surprising. Enjoy!