And the question is:
"Why should you never play chess with a dragon?"

In the distant future, man isn't a whole lot smarter than he is today. We join the great horde in the galaxy thinking that everything is for free. When the bill comes due, it's a shocker.

But we find out quickly through our cast that the whole things a rigged game being played with loaded dice; con artists abound; and talk is definitely not cheap.

This book is a fast but delightful read. The alien cultures are neatly delivered with insight into their way of doing things. And philanthopists they're not.

I strongly recommend "Chess With a Dragon" especially if you have a sense of humor.

Chess with a dragon is one of the faster reading books I have seen. Although it may look like 150 or so pages, the large number of chapters, and layout at the chapters makes the actual length more like 100 pages.

Short is not bad. This is a really enjoyable, very good book.

The title "Chess with a Dragon" does not refer to an actual game; rather, at the point where the good guys are in the worst possible shape, one of them has to, hrmm, "negotiate", with an alien creature from a race called the Dragons.

Without spoiling the book: The story takes place in the far future. Man has found the stars, or been found by them; man has been introduced into the galactic society, that revolves around the galactic library, an information storehouse that races can "borrow" information from (running up an information debt), or repay by adding new information to.

As the story opens, mankind is informed that the credit limit has been reached, and it is time to make payment plans. Of course, the race that has purchased the information debt wants one type of collection plan, that isn't necessarily favorable to mankind's future existance.

Sure..the storyline might not be the most innovative one, but I can't help loving this volume anyway. Daniel Torres seduces me completely with his wonderful images. It's like meeting a long lost friend from my childhood. As a person deeply in love with architecture and design as well as space adventure this is truly a treat. Yummm!

I was excited to get this book and hoped that I would lear more about the components in a tube amp and what they do. The book talks about the high level functions and then jumps right into diagrams of specific amps. That jump left was to big for me. I got lost and although the schematic diagrams were somewhat facinating, there are many web sites that have those diagrams in more detail for many more amplifiers. I get the feeling that this book is really an attempt by the author to give you enough information to want to buy his amp kits. Further, when I went to the User Review Section of Harmony Central (A Musician Web Site with extensive information about musical products), and looked up Torres Engineering I found reviews by customers that were not happy. They had not been treated well on the phone and the products or services they purchased had problems and the company was unwilling to solve the problems. Before you buy any of the kits or amp modifications do yourself a favor and read the reviews.

I agree with many of the reviews below. This book is poorly written in a style which, while not exactly condescending, can be considered needlessly flippant. There is no real progression toward building a real tube amplifier, though there appears to be an attempt at one. You'll be confused by a series of somewhat disjoint chapters discussing various components of a tube amp and unfortunately interspersed with tube amp modifications that should have been placed later in the book. Finally, in the chapter(s) dealing building one, you realize that (a) you contantly have to look for more information in earlier chapters and (b) you do not really have a complete list of what you'll need (nor do you have a set of concrete how-to, step-by-step instructions).

If not for the fact that there's some valuable information tucked away on some of the book's pages, this would be a total bust.

This book contained lots of information, but the way it was presented made it extremely difficult to accomplish my final goal -- to build a class A amplifier. The book is not a tutorial on so much the construction of tube amps, but rather a long list of modifications. Perhaps the biggest problem that plagues this entire book is that the author repeatedly tells you to open up your '60s Marshall or Fender or Traynor amp, all of which are extremely expensive and not exactly readily available. Because I don't own any of those amps, I was stuck to just read about adding more midrange to a '66 Marshall JTM, rather than learning how midrange actually works. Also, the author spends too little time on important subjects (tubes in general were basically covered in 3 or 4 confusing sentences...).