This book was recently (1998) recognized by the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport as the best book of the year.

I'm kind of glad this went out of print; it makes the vast amount of information on the French I learned from it all the rarer. Actually, I have used it to play from either white or black's side, and this is the book from which I learned to play the French seriously. A few omissions (like nothing on the obscure Alapin Variation) can be forgiven, in light of the numerous suggestions for beyond-the-book-move play. If you only had one book on the French and this were it, you would be pretty tough to take down.

Gambit books have two titles written by correspondence players. the first claims to have analysed many queen's pawn games to a forced win for white, the other is a superbly annotated collection of dynamic games. While the first (berliner's 'the system') is a dud, the second (this book) is one of the best books gambit have published, it just avoids the eye at tournament book stalls because it is a)correspondence chess b)non-descript in appearance.

The chess is breathtaking, and like dvoretsky says (and dvoretsky you can trust on these matters) there are many useful ideas in these games, i myself returned to playing e4 after reading this book. Not only is the chess wonderful the annotations are excellent too, and the prose and stories extremely readable. one of the best game collection i own along with taimanov's best games, smyslov's 125, tal's life and games and keres road to the top (and i own about 20 collections in all).

Don't make the mistake of buying the dud, buy the masterpiece instead

Published in 1992, former World Champion Anatoly Karpov offers 6 chapters on facing Black's Grunfeld defence. An uncompromising system. At the time of publication Karpov had scored 6 wins, 1 loss and 16 draws vs Garry Kasparov (1986-1990) using his anti-Grunfeld approach. Chapters 1 & 2 (1.d4 Nf6, 2.c4 g6, 3.Nc3 d5, 4.cxd5, Nxd5, 5.e4 Bg7). Chapter 3 (5.e4 Nxc3 6.bxc3 Bg7). Chapter 4 (4.Nf3 Bg7). Chapter 5 (4.Bf4 Bg7) and Chapter 6 (3.Nf3 Bg7, 4.g3 c6, 5.Bg2 d5). Sorry for the technical jargon, but who wants to buy an opening book without at least knowing the types of positions that may arise after the first few moves? I have turned down several books due to the lack of opening description. I hope this helps.

This book takes you through all of the Fifa soccer teams. It even talks about the teams in depth, like about their past history of goals and victories, and even in losses. It takes you to the best players on those teams and tells the victories or losses that the player had on the team. On the players, it will also tell you all the clubs they were part of and their avarage goals they made in the past. So I think think this book is really good for you if you love a lot of European International Soccer. Even some of it will take you through the Ebglish football scene.

The author has a healthy respect for Drake without becoming too enamored. The author points out at near the end of the book that Drake was the right man at the right time. On Drake's later expeditions (that were failures) the Spanish had fortified their holdings in the new world to a point that made it more difficult for privateers. This, however, does not detract from Drake's earlier success which would not have been accomplished by men of lesser genius.

The book portrays a little focused on time & place: the frontier in the early 1800s (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois). The author depicts William Henry Harrison as a manipulative, greedy & sometimes untruthful individual. Most people are aware of the native American treaties that the government negotiated & broke with the Plains Indians later in the century; the book details the interactions between the government & Indians in an earlier time period. The author reveals the impact of Tecumseh on Canadian history & portrays him as a complex & charismatic individual.

As a history student whose interests are in the Colonial period to the Civil War I was intrigued with this book on Tecumseh. It was well written and very informative of the Shawnee Chief's career. Not only was this a wonderful resource guide but most importantly it was an easy read, which is essential for college students. True, Tecumseh spread a lot of blood on the plains of Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky but his teachings along with his brother Tenskawatawa are the important keys to understanding the will of Tecumseh.

John Sugden's "Tecumseh" is more than a well researched biography of the great Indian chief; it is also a moving story of the clash of cultures in the Old Northwest in the late 18th and early 19th century. At no time are the Indians portrayed as the "gentle children of nature" oppressed by the wicked white man...a portrayal that has become all too common in our era where history is too often written from the viewpoint of the underclass. Instead, the Indians are portrayed as human beings ( at times noble and at times savage ) struggling to survive the whirlwind of the white world that was destroying their way of life.

Tecumseh's life and character are well documented and his dream of an Indian confederacy, united to resist the American seizure of Indian land, is the centerpiece of the book. Other Indian leaders, as well as Tecumseh's brother The Prophet, figure in the narative, as do the different approaches the various tribes took in dealing with the Big Knives. An understanding of Tecumseh's life is not the only reward derived from a reading of this book. One also comes away with a much deeper understanding of the divisions within the Indian world and the various problems they faced within a way of life on the road to extinction. At the end, one senses the true depth of the tragedy, and gains an admiration for a man of great character and nobility, who gave of all his energy, in an attempt to save his people and their way of life.

It tried to like this book, but I couldn't. This guy is just not a very good writer. He takes a very exciting period of history and makes it not so exciting. He is good at presenting facts (though some are a little shaky), but not so good at writing a story based on the facts. There are better writers dealing with this time period.

Sugden's third book on the Shawnee tribe (Tecumseh's Last Stand and Tecumseh: A Life being the other two) is a competent piece of historical writing, but is, in my view, the weakest of the three. Sugden does a fairly good job of debunking the belief that Blue Jacket was a white man, presenting a variety of materials to counter the dubious evidence usually cited by those who support this contention. While diehard believers will not be convinced, Sugden will likely influence those who do not cling to this old (and widely accepted) tale.

As for the bulk of the book, Sugden does a fair job of collecting the bits and pieces of Blue Jacket's history and weaving them into a readable narrative. The difficulty he (or anyone in the future who wishes to explore Blue Jacket's life) faces is that there is too little material available to produce a thorough biography of this Shawnee. Compared to other Shawnees of the same time frame such as Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa (the Prophet), or even Black Hoof, there is little in the historical record about Blue Jacket, certainly when one is attempting to write a full-length biography.

Perhaps if Sugden had published this as an article (or series thereof) or incorporated Blue Jacket's story within the framework of a larger tribal or regional history, the holes in Blue Jacket's history would be less gaping. However, the lack of source material forces Sugden to draw conclusions and make some speculations based on suspect evidence and assumptions. For example, little is known about Blue Jacket before the American Revolution. Sugden uses the few sources available from the American colonial period, but is forced to fill in holes with generalizations about what is known about the Shawnee and their neighbors. This weakens the biography because Blue Jacket the individual is often lost in these generalities.

On the positive side, Sugden presents, to this point, the most complete biography of Blue Jacket. The only other widely available biography is Allan Eckert's: Blue Jacket: War Chief of the Shawnees, which, while more vibrant and perhaps better written, is subject to broad speculation by the author, fosters the highly suspect Swearingen (captive white) connection, and is more literature than history. Therefore, Sugden's book is currently the best if one wishes to learn about the historical Blue Jacket. In all fairness to the author, I am not convinced that a better book on the subject is achieveable, which is a shame because Blue Jacket may never achieve the historical status of contemporaries such as Tecumseh or Little Turtle; a place he richly deserves.

Blue Jacket is an exciting authoritative biography of a Shawnee war chief of great military, diplomatic, strategic and political achievements. Compared with other Native American leaders such as Red Cloud, Geronimo, Crazy Horse, and Sitting Bull, Blue Jacket, or Waweyapiersenwaw is portrayed as a Shawnee patriot and defender of his tribe's Ohio River territory.Unafraid to utilize white and mixed blood connections(he married two wives of white or mixed Native American/white blood), Blue Jacket provided inspiration and a role model for the famous Tecumseh in his later years. Covering an estimated lifespan from 1743 to 1808, the biography details a fully human portrait of Blue Jacket with fine details drawn from a variety of close sources.

Many examples of Blue Jacket's skill and astuteness are given. The precarious position of the Shawnees, between the British, the French, and enemy tribes is well documented. A reputation for handling disagreements among allies also is characteristic of Blue Jacket. Respected by Native Americans and Europeans alike, Blue Jacket's conduct throughout his life was characterized by a balance of abilities, traditional religion, warring and hunting skills, and also an ability to prosper from the additions of white culture. An example of an attempt to analyze Blue Jacket's political support of Tecumseh and the Prophet is quoted: "And so in the early days of the movement of Tecumseh and the Prophet, Blue Jacket illustrated its capacity to attract differently minded men and women, people who saw advantages in one way or another.Blue Jacket probably saw the sense in much of what the Prophet said, but we cannot suppose that these arguments were sufficient inducements for the most sophisticated of all Shawnees. We can, however, only guess at his motives. We know he was ambitious; he always had been. We know, too, that he was isolated, living apart from the center of Shawnee affairs in Ohio and seldom attending their tribal council. The most likely explanation of his interest in the Prophet is that he saw in him a way to recover influence and power. It was his final attempt to challenge the supremacy of Black Hoof and other old Meckoche rivals (pp. 241-242)."

The history of the Shawnee and other Native American tribes in the East is riddled with blood and lost ground. However, this biography of Blue Jacket testifies to a man who straddled cultures and achieved a level of both success and bitterness. Most interesting of all is the legacy of blood that he fathered, traced in meticulous detail by authentic sources by author Sugden. Although it may suffer from the loss of a Native American voice, Blue Jacket presents a piecing together of a lost portrait, powerful and sure. It provides a missing piece of history. "Today, most people's perception of American Indian armed resistance, itself only part of a complicated history, is extremely limited. It is the warriors of another age who are remembered - men of the later nineteenth century, whose fame has benefited from the growth of the popular press, the cinema, and improved communications. Yet Blue Jacket's followers accounted for more American enemies in serious battle than the forces of Cochise, Red Cloud, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, and Geronimo put together, and his vision of intertribal unity was much keener and more sophisticated. Of course, we are all products of our own times, but when the long roll of Indian notables is called, surely the name of Waweyapiersenwaw, or Blue Jacket, deserves to find its place. (pp.263-64)."

Nancy Lorraine, Reviewer

If you're looking for a scholarly work on the life of Paganini, don't buy this book; it's nothing more than a regurgitation of information and quotes from other articles and biographies on Paganini. The author fails to properly quote all of his sources and frequently interjects his own tedious opinions, which I found to be trite and irrelevant.

While the book is fairly well written and offers some insight into Paganini's life, it is simply a previously published book ("Niccolo Paganini: Supreme Violinist or Devil's Fiddler") now pubished under a different title. Since there seems to be a dearth of material on Paganini, this makes it even more disappointing.