Indepth analysis of various lines. It will improve your chances greatly with Blk and offer you more opportunities with white to attack. Notation is a bit hard to handle. Also, some games were not in my database. Easy to follow (C/B)

This book is an attempt to create an opening repetoire for the developing player which does not require hours and hours of study, yet provides the aggressive player with reasonable attacking chances.

In my opinion, the author succeeds for the most part. It is very difficult for a book this size to provide a complete discussion of the nuances in each of the opening systems presented. The approach in the book is to open each chapter with some "light talk" about the variation chosen, followed by a few representative master level games.

Players rated below 1300-1400 may not have developed the requisite skills to understand the material presented, while players rated above 1800-1900 will find that the book doesen't cover the variations in enough detail to fully prepare them face opponents rated 2000+.

Like most chess books, there are a few typos, but in general I feel that this book is a good value for a player fitting the attacking profile rated 1400-1800.

This book is a reasonable attempt to piece together an opening repertoire that on the one hand is aggressive, but on the other hand does not require 100's of hours of preparation time.

I actually used the variations suggested in this book for a period of about 2.5 years in actual tournament play. I had very decent results (I am currently rated around 1800 USCF).

The lines selected are fairly forcing and unbalanced. There are a few places where the book is somewhat weak. I noted the same problems as one of the other reveiwers in the section on the pirc/modern defense. (There is a game that leaves you hanging in a terrible position, but seems to imply that you winning - it makes no sense at all. In fact, the side they are trying to convince you to play ends up losing very badly in the actual game.)

Other than that, I must say that the authors really have done a decent job of trying to "fit" a repertoire within the parameters ascribed.

I would estimate that it only took me around 5-10 hours to play over all of the games and footnotes in the book. I remembered them fairly easily, and went on to win a very respectable number of games.

I would recommend the book to players rated between around 1400 to around 1800. I don't feel that there are enough notes for players below around 1400 to really understand why certain moves are made. For players over 1800, much deeper preparation than this book provides would be required.

In particular, I have had incredible results with the openings chosen from the black side. They are openings that I would not have even considered playing had I not read this book. (Scandinavian and Chigoran).

There are better, there are much worse. This is not a bad addition to your library.

This book taught me how to prepare an opening repertoire. First I adopted all the suggested opening lines for black and white, and then I improved and accommodated them to my own playing style. It is a book I consult regularly. Although I bought this book in 1997, I still keep on reading it. It is a very good book.

I am familar with the writer and the book Joel. This is really not a Jewish book but a Christain text. Mr. Levy believes in Jesus as his messiah and this is fine. I have no problem with this religious orientation. However, he is not Jewish. The idea of Hebrew-Christain being Jewish is an oxymoron. According to most religious thinkers a Christain believes in Jesus as their lord and messiah. Jews do not believe in this doctrine. Personally, I am most offended by labeling this item as Jewish. It is not.

Levy's books are most helpful. They give a good Jewish perspective on the matter. Sometimes it is very stimulating to see the thoughts of a Jewish scholar and how he perceives the matter, particular on the minor prophets - many people cannot fully grasp the meaning and purpose of the prophets. Levy does a great job in capturing the purposes. He has another excellent book that I would recommend called "The Tabernacle: Shadows of the Messiah."

The book fails to offer a comprehensive perspective and is certainly not the definitive work described in the publisher's promo. The "S.A. Book of the Cosmos" is neither up to date nor does it provide a coherent retrospective view. It flits about from topic to topic and leaves important questions unanswered. In my opinion, there are far better books on cosmology for the casually interested reader: Look for titles by Harrison, Gribbon, Davies, Guth, and Thorne.

This book is not as bad as others have indicated here. It is more an anthology of Cosmology related "essays" from Scientific American than it is an academic treatment of cutting-edge Cosmology.

If you want hardcore Cosmology, look elsewhere. But if you want brief, easy-to-read overviews of current ideas in Cosmology, this should be an enjoyable book for you.

Yes, there is a general lack of pictures, but the color pictures that are present are very nice. Besides, I am more interested in the content of the text.

I found the first three historical essays to be of special interest. One is by Einstein and concerns Relativity. The most fascinating for me is the one by Erwin Schrodinger titled "What is Matter?". This article alone was worth the price of the book for me. Schrodinger's essay helped me to understand, more than any other book, what we mean by the terms matter, energy, and force.

why on earth, no pun intended, would anybody be disappointed in this terrific book that brings together cosmological thought from Einstein to Sagan, all in one package?

This is a rich source for further meditation on the cosmos, nicely designed and illustrated.

The book by the co-discoverer of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet would be appropriate for a middle school or early high school student. At that level it would be a good introduction to astronomy. Those above that educational level may be bored. Because of this the book alone would be rated 2 stars. There are intriguing b&w photographs included.

The included CDROM, however is much better (more in depth): 4 stars. It was produced under the auspices of Scientific American and contains the E-text of Leon Lederman and David Schramm's 1995 edition of "From Quarks to the Cosmos". This is an admirable description of how particle physics was brought into astronomy in the early 1980's to elucidate the Big Bang theory. Nobel laureate Lederman and his coauthor Schramm were much involved in this work.

The CDROM also includes a number of Quicktime video clips of other scientists describing various aspects of the Big Bang theory such as inflation, along with other entertaining features such as simulated experiments you can have fun with.

The only drawback to the CDROM is its 640 x 480 format that displays in a reduced center of a 17 inch screen.

So the book and disc average out to 3 stars.