I don't have much to add to the other review. I will say that I occasionally stop playing 1. e4 all together, because I don't want to face the Sicilian. But this is silly. Why play chess at all if I am scared of certain lines? After all, it's only a game. My point is that when I come back to 1. e4 and try to decide what to play against the Sicilian, I always end up turning to this book by Lane (that is, after I try and drop the Smith-Morra [too gimmicky], the Alapin [too passive], the Grand Prix [too aggressive], and the Closed [too Closed!]. The Bc4 scheme makes a lot of sense, and is consonant with chess principles and chess history (Fischer used it, and he is the closest thing to what Morphy may have been like in the modern era). Excellent book with a good index in the back and nicely produced by Batsford.

I think that this book is highly reccomended to all players who don't like to simply win a chess game! The lines are analized with clearness taking advantage of what grandmaster practice has done with them. Lane chooses beautiful and instructive games for each line and he gives the strategic plans that are behind any possible continuations (all the notes are strictly connected to this feature). This is very important because this variation doesn't admit any misjudgments and so the moves must be carefully calculated, this is why it's most wiseable to me that you can understand the way you make that move instead of learning the move from a book. This book allows you to enter the secrets of the Fischer-Sozin without putting in your memory a lot of move orders without explanation. The only reason I didn't give 10 rating is that I wanted to see much more games than the 48 analized inside... But I can assure you this number is anyway worth of it!

This is a Spanish translation of 'How to attack in chess'. I have limited use of the language but from what I can tell this seems to be a fluent and easy to read format. Gary Lane selects various themes to demonstrate how to attack and improve. At the end of each chapter there are puzzles to solve in order to help the reader test his knowledge.
A fun way to play better chess.

Coming out of RazorBlade Press, Hideous Progeny is one monstrously beautiful anthology that explores the world as it would have been if Dr. Victor Frankenstein's gruesome experiments had not gone awry. Writers such as Tim Lebbon, Peter Crowther, Steven Volk, Steve Rasnic Tem, and Rhys Hughes (to name just a few) each donate a small literary organ to the mix, and everything is skilfully stitched together into a marvellous book by first-time editor Brian Willis.

Cosmetically, the book is a two-face: while cover design by Chris Nurse is nothing short of outstanding, the internal layout is not without blemish. For example, outside margins are too wide, story titles are not always at the same height in the page, and the author's name is italicised in some but not all of the instances. Another gripe I have is that page numbers on the right-hand pages are left-aligned; plus, headers have no indication about the stories presented below them: these will give you a bad time if you want to riffle through the book to look up a specific something. There are a few extra typesetting warts and moles as well, as I noticed some characters showing up in a different size than the rest of the text, uneven spacing between words, typos derived from bad OCR, and so on. I sincerely encourage RazorBlade Press to pay more attention to internal design in the future, and run a few spell checks as well. Still, don't let appearances fool you, because the writing on these pages is top-notch.

In the whole, I was not in the least disappointed by Hideous Progeny while expecting quality work. Many short stories surprised me by their original angles, and all are very well written. The subjects are quite varied too, although some do overlap a little - it seems inevitable given the limitations inherent to their collective premise. I have my favourites, of course: Peter Crowther's piece is shocking yet touching at the same time, and the idea behind "Mad Jack" is a simple but nevertheless brilliant one. "The Banker of Ingolstadt" is perhaps the funniest in the book, and I found Steven Volk's "Blitzenstein" to rank among the best.

Whatever shortcomings the book has, they're quickly overwhelmed by the superb fiction it it, not to mention a downright gorgeous cover. For £6.99, it's well worth getting Hideous Progeny: not only will you be adding a fine specimen of a book to your library, you'll also be helping small press business to thrive. Because I want to see more from RazorBlade Press. Oh yeah.

As a concerned parent of of two children who love chess this book has been a marvel. It managed to keep them quiet during the holidays and seems to have helped them to win more games. I have used it myself to learn new tips because Lane uses an entertaining style to teach different aspects of the game. There are original puzzles at the end of each chapter, although one is taken from a James Bond movie! I have used the book at chess camp to teach pupils who happily played through the examples. Very good.

I have a limited time to study chess but with the help of this book I have recently won several games against higher rated players. The secret is that Gary Lane manages to give opening tips on positions that are likely to be met by the average player. If you are looking for an improvement in the main line Sicilian on move 22 then this is not for you. The vast majority will like the suggestions in openings such as the Nimzo-Indian, Dutch Defence and even the Elephant Gambit! There are plenty of tricks and traps to catch out lots of opponents.

Pretty good audio book. Especially enjoyed the poem by S. Wilkins. I would like to see/hear more from him.

i enjoyed these stories as i listened to them at work. it made the day go by at 65 mph!

My mother, Lane Taylor, was one of the writers of this book. So I listened to it and I thought it was pretty neat!

Along with Murray Chandler's more recent, The Complete c3 Sicilian, this is one of only two Alapin Sicilian books worth owning. The games in this book are no longer on the cutting edge of theory, but are still instructive examples of the latent power of the system. There are fewer games than in Chandler's tome, but Lane's are annotated more with the amateur player in mind which is very helpful in an opening about which little has been written until its recent rise in popularity. If you can get a copy of this book, pick it up.

This book is so well written that not only did I come away with a good understanding of this particular opening system, but Mr. Lane's explanations of why each move was important in each separate variation helped my chess play in general. The very next tournament I played in I beat two higher ranked players and gained a bunch of ratings points. Read it! I guarantee you will come away impressed. --Mike Nokes USCF 1321--

In this book Gary Lane reveals a reliable opening system against the Sicilian. It has potential for kingside attacks and leads to middlegames where White has an easy plan. I also bought 'Winning with the Closed Sicilian' also by Lane many years ago but this is a completely new product.
I have won many games with this opening system because I can follow a basic plan without having to remember lots of moves.
A great book.

The Closed Sicilian is a good way to beat the Sicilian Defence. It is easy to understand and there is always a big chance to attack. I have played it on the internet and won games against players rated USCF 2150, which is three hundred points higher than me!! Mr Lane includes lots of fantastic games by White although I am not sure if I can remember everything.
A great book if you want to beat the Sicilian.

I like the Vienna because it helps me to win! There are fantastic attacking lines such as the wonderful sounding 'Frankenstein-Dracula Attack' and I am in a quieter mood I can play 1 e4 e5 Nc3 Nf6 3 g3 to play safe, positional chess. There are eight chapters and seventy-seven annotated games that help to understand the opening. The English master Gary Lane knows what he is talking about and I love the ways he shows 'tricks and traps' for people playing colors Black or White. There are lots of strong US players who have successfully used the opening such as Benjamin and Shabalov that is good news. The introduction offers a repertoire for players of different standards and styles. Thankfully, there is an excellent historical background, which makes a change from other publishers that I won't mention. It says on the back of the book that Lane has already written twelve books and judging by this effort I want more of the same thing.

To this 7-book author, a high school chess coach and tournament chess player this book provides the best format for a chess-opening book I've ever seen. The games are clear examples of the opening lines and the book's layout makes the material easy to digest. This book will help you win more games as you turn games away from the heavily studied Lopez lines. You will learn about the positional lines of the Vienna as well as the fun-to-play Vienna Gambit 3. f4, which this book makes appear much safer than the King's Gambit. I am so impressed with this book that I'm looking for Lane's other books.

This book is one in Zondervan's Counterpoints Series, which presents the view of various (mostly) Evangelical writers on theological subjects. This book is sorely needed because Evangelical apologists have had a history of writing critically and polemically of one another (one thinks of the Clark/Van Til debate), with the result of the layman having a difficult time deciding among the various positions.

The problem with this book is either that the writers are too timid or are more irenic than their label would indicate. There are three authors who present variations on the traditional approach: the classical method (Craig), the evidential method (Habermas), and the cumulative case method (Feinberg). These approaches are quite similar, although some differences do arise. When the reader gets to John Frame's presuppositional method, he expects to get a starkly different approach. After all, Van Til was notorious for attacking "traditional" apologetics as "Roman Catholic" or "Arminian." Well, Frame tells us that he agrees with most of what Craig writes. The final writer, Kelly James Clark (who represents the "Reformed epistemological method"), says the same thing.

Perhaps the editor could have selected a follower of Gordon Clark (a rationalist who denied the proofs of God's existence) or a fideist to present a contrasting apologetic method.

Few books have seriously tackled apologetic method, or how Christianity should be defended rationally. The last book I know of that surveyed options in this regard was Gordon Lewis, "Testing Christianity's Truth Claims" (Moody Press, 1976; republished by University Press of America).

This book presents five different approaches, each represented by one of its exponents: Classical Apologetics (William Lane Craig), Evidentialism (Gary Habermas), Culumulative Case Method (Paul Feinberg), Presuppositionalism (John Frame), and Reformed Epistemology (Kelly James Clark).

Much ground is covered concerning the Bible's approach to apologetics, where apologetic arguments should begin, how certain arguments for Christianity are, and so on. I will simply make a few comments.

The presentations by Craig and Habermas are the most worthwhile because they are the most intellectual rigorous and well-documented. They also tend to agree with each on most things and reinforce each others views. While I tend to favor a cumulative case method (influenced by E.J. Carnell and Francis Schaeffer, but with more appreciation for natural theology), Feinberg's comments are the weakest by far. He never mentions the leading exponent of this view in our generation (Carnell) nor Carnell's apt and well-published student (and my esteemed colleague), Dr. Gordon Lewis. Not one word about either one! His comments are brief, his documentation is thin, and he fails to advance anything very creative or helpful, I'm afraid. A better person should have been chosen, such as Gordon Lewis. Frame gives his "kinder, gentler" version of Cornelius Van Til, which still suffers from the same kinds of problems--most notably the fallacy of begging the question in favor of Christianity. Nevertheless, the notion of a "transcendental argument" for theism is a good one, but it should not carry all the weight of apologetics. Clark's material is philosophically well-informed (one would expect this of a student of Alvin Plantinga!), but apologetically timid. Clark almost sounds like a skeptic at times.

A few bones more bones to pick. The editor refers to Francis Schaeffer as a presuppositionalist. This is false; he was a verificationist with more in common with Carnell than with Van Til. Gordon Lewis's fine essay on Schaeffer's apologetic method in "Reflections on Francis Schaeffer" makes this very clear. None of the writers address the great apologetic resources found in Blaise Pascal. I also found at least two grammatical errors.

Nevertheless, as a professor of philosophy at a theological seminary who teaches apologetics, I found this volume very helpful and useful. But let's not get so involved in methodological concerns that we fail to go out in the world and defend our Christian faith as objectively true, existentially vital, and rationally compelling (Jude 3)!

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Philosophy Denver Seminary

Before I write anything, I would like to suggest that the reader of "Five Views on Apologetics" first read "Faith Has Its Reasons" by Kenneth Bow and Robert Bowman, Jr. (NavPress). Doing so will give you a good overview of the methodology taken by the different positions; it would be akin to reading a preview of this afternoon's football game, with a summary of the players and the strategy that will be used fully explained.

Overall "Five Views on Apologetics" is worthwhile for the serious-minded Christian. I do like these "View" books because they allow all sides to take part in a dialogue that certainly has more potential to get things accomplished rather than a free-for-all live debate. All sides get to give their side with succeeding rebuttals. This book certainly had some lively discussion as all of the participants had their own ideas of how apologetics should be handled. The five positions were: William Lane Craig (classical); Gary Habermas (evidential); Paul Feinberg (cumulative); John Frame (presuppositional); Kelly James Clark (Reformed Epistemological).

However, there were three weak points that I need to point out. First, I'm not sure the debaters were the best representatives of the positions they defended. For instance, Craig could be described as a combination classicist/evidentialist. Much of what he said could have been written by Habermas, as even Habermas admitted. Feinberg had, I believe, the weakest argumentation, as I just never did track with his thoughs. Meanwhile, Frame certainly has his own twist on Van Til's ideas, yet these twists make his position a "kinder, gentler" version of Reformed apologetics and thus is not truly representative of Van Tillians--and there are plenty of these thinkers out there. And Clark might as well let Alvin Plantinga write his section since Clark seemed to mention Plantinga in practically every paragraph.

Second, it is apparent that much of the differences quickly became similarities by the end of the book. In fact, Craig even mentioned how he appreciated the similarities the debaters had. If this is so, then why write the book in the first place? In fact, more than once a respondent to another's position declared, in essence, "Why, that could have been me writing! I think--fill in the name--really is a--fill in the position--like I am." This attitude prevailed through much of the book, especially in the concluding comments. (At the same time, perhaps we should rejoice that in a book of Christian division, so many similarities could be found!)

Finally, I think the book got a little too technical in some areas, especially by several of the writers. I think Craig is a master philosopher, and I've seen Bayes' Theorem before, but I'm still scratching my head trying to understand several pages of formulas he put together to support one of his points. Perhaps with some personal explanation I could better understand, but I'm thinking many reading this book would have been totally lost (as I humbly admit I was). Although I didn't agree with his stance, I thought John Frame did the best in explaining his philosophy in the simplist, most logical way possible.

Despite what I feel are its shortcomings, I do recommend this book for the serious student who is interested in apologetics. I enjoyed it very much and was certainly enlightened about the role apologetics takes in the Christian's life.