Book Description
"In my opinion, [Agee's] column is the most remarkable regular event in American journalism today."--W. H. Auden
James Agee was passionately involved with the movies throughout his life. A master of both fiction and nonfiction, he wrote about film in clean, smart prose as the reviewer for Time magazine and as a columnist for The Nation. Agee was particularly perceptive about the work of his friend John Huston and recognized the artistic merit of certain B films such as The Curse of the Cat People and other movies produced by Val Lewton.
Customer Reviews:
The Master Writes His Love.......2007-03-30
James Agee was a great writer (his book about the Dust Bowl is a classic). He continued to be a brilliant writer in his film reviews and his scripts. Thank you, Modern Library, for returning these collections of writing to us. They are wonderful to read and they make you think!
He created serious film criticism.......2005-08-21
I still have my first edition copy of Agee on Film.
A production on the stage is seen once and then is gone forever. Curiously, despite the fact that a film can be viewed repeatedly, once upon a time revivals were rare, and most audiences saw a film once, talked about it, then forgot about it.
Even the film studios only half-heartedly treated their products as permanent, allowing many of them to deteriorate irretrievably and others nearly so (eventually giving rise to an entire industry devoted to film restoration).
Films were given a new life with the advent of television. Growing up on old movies on the tube in the 1950s, I found that repeated viewing of the same film could be a rich experience, and nothing enhanced this experience more than the appearance in the early 1960s of Agee on Film.
Agee took film seriously as a cultural experience, a molder of public opinion, a tool that might be useful or dangerous. Just how much he differs from mainstream reviewers who regarded the movies primarily as entertainment can be seen in the two different sets of reviews in this book.
His reviews in the liberal The Nation are extended analyses of the films and the sensibilities of the filmmakers, withering critiques of the limitations of the studio system, and manifestos on how good films could have been made better. Agee interpolates in his reviews his opinions about everything: The War (WWII, of course), politics, race, education, religion, psychology, philosophy ... the list goes on.
In contrast, his reviews for Time, constrained by that magazine's conservatism, are truncated and absent the depth and bite that distinguishes Agee from all other critics. His beautiful use of language keeps him afloat, but were it not for The Nation, I doubt Agee would have the reputation of Greatest Film Critic of All Time.
Agee on Film was originally in two volumes. The first was the current book. The second was a collection of Agee's own screenplays, including the classic The Night of the Hunter; Noa Noa, a fascinating teleplay about Gaugin (very different from Maughams' The Moon and Sixpence); and his magnificent adaptation of the The African Queen. Thus, he was able, unlike most critics, and with admirable results, to put his pen where his critique was.
James Agee almost single-handedly popularized the appreciation of film as an art form. The writing in this book is how he did it.
James Agee, an inspiring critic.......2001-06-17
Ever wonder what causes a movie reviewer to *become* a movie reviewer? When I was a ten-year-old kid just getting into classic movie comedies, I went to the library and checked out the book AGEE ON FILM solely because it had references to Charlie Chaplin and W.C. Fields. Thus was my introduction to high-quality film criticism.
James Agee made his reputation writing sterling movie reviews for Time and The Nation magazines in the 1940's. Among other glories, he wrote a much-heralded essay titled "Comedy's Greatest Era" that helped to bring silent-comedy icons (most notably Harry Langdon) out of mothballs and caused them to be re-viewed and discussed seriously among film historians. He later went on to work on the screenplays of a couple of gems titled The African Queen and Night of the Hunter.
Unfortunately, many people who regard the critics Pauline Kael and Stanley Kauffmann have either forgotten Agee's work entirely or have assigned his own work to mothballs. But among the faithful are film director Martin Scorsese, who serves as editor of the "Modern Library: The Movies" series of film books. The series has recently reissued the AGEE ON FILM book, and re-reading Agee's work (or reading it for the first time, if you're lucky enough) proves that film criticism can make for reading material as compelling as any fictional novel.
Agee passes the acid test for any film critic: Even if you don't agree with him, his writing is so lively that you can't help enjoying it. His work ranges from three separate columns (three weeks' worth, in print terms) to Chaplin's much-maligned (at the time) MONSIEUR VERDOUX, to the most concise, funniest review ever: Reviewing a musical potboiler titled YOU WERE MEANT FOR ME, Agee replied in four simple words, "That's what *you* think."
If you want to see what high-caliber movie criticism meant in the pre-Siskel & Ebert days, engross yourself in this sprawling book. It'll make you appreciate the decades before every newspaper, newsletter, and Internet site had its own minor-league deconstructionist of Hollywood blockbusters.
Resurrected Film Study.......2001-02-17
James Agee was short for this world, having died in his mid 40s. In that span of time he wrote a famous book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and a couple of classic screenplays, AFRICAN QUEEN and NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. This collection of magazine film reviews and essays is in many ways the leftover part of his work, and yet it feels like enough to make a reputation on. His reviews span just one decade, the 1940s. Many of them tackle foreign films that may be unavailable for all I know.
Interesting to me is that he spends three weeks discussing Chaplin's MONSIEUR VERDOUX, which is a most unusual movie and mostly forgotten today. This might be because he saw it as his only chance to write a poignant piece on the greatest living film artist, or it may be because he identified with the plight of mankind theme that Chaplin was reaching for. You can pick another reason, yourself, but it was a bold decision, because most critics panned the film (according to him) and most readers probably couldn't even see the movie in their small towns. It was as if he knew he would be writing for posterity. Like all critics, he cultivated his darlings. He saw much in the work of John Huston and was very skillful in his sizing up of TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE. I was impressed that he predicted the all-time classic nature of the film, but also understood the studio system gimmicks that took away from the genius.
You don't have to be literary minded like W. H. Auden to enjoy this book. You'll like it, if you like movies.
More than we ever deserved . . ........2000-05-12
James Agee wrote film criticism in America at a time when the American film industry hardly deserved his attention. His celebrations of silent film comedy, of Preston Sturges, of John Huston [for whom he later wrote the script for The African Queen], and of the handful of worthy foreign films that he managed to see are what make this volume worth reading. Besides Agee's beautiful prose and above all his compassion. Interestingly, Agee was a fan of Frank Capra's comedies (It Happened One Night) and bemoaned the director's decent into serious social films (Mr Smith Goes To Washington, Meet John Doe). His negative review of It's a Wonderful Life, which has never been in print since it appeared in 1946, reveals the extent to which Agee was perhaps too far ahead of his time, and even of ours.
Book Description
James Agee brought to bear all his moral energy, slashing wit, and boundless curiosity in the criticism and journalism that established him as one of the commanding literary voices of America at mid-century. In 1944 W. H. Auden called Agee's film reviews for The Nation "the most remarkable regular event in American journalism today." Those columns, along with much of the movie criticism that Agee wrote for Time through most of the 1940s, were collected posthumously in Agee on Film: Reviews and Comments, undoubtedly the most influential writings on film by an American.
Whether reviewing a Judy Garland musical or a wartime documentary, assessing the impact of Italian neorealism or railing against the compromises in a Hollywood adaptation of Hemingway, Agee always wrote of movies as a pervasive, profoundly significant part of modern life, a new art whose classics (Chaplin, Dovzhenko, Vigo) he revered and whose betrayal in the interests of commerce or propaganda he often deplored. If his frequent disappointments could be registered in acid tones, his enthusiasms were expressed with passionate eloquence. This Library of America volume supplements the classic pieces from Agee on Film with previously uncollected writings on Ingrid Bergman, the Marx Brothers, Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat, Vittorio De Sica's Shoeshine, and a wealth of other cinematic subjects.
Agee's own work as a screenwriter is represented by his script for Charles Laughton's unique and haunting masterpiece of Southern gothic, The Night of the Hunter, adapted from the novel by Davis Grubb. This collection also includes examples of Agee's masterfully probing reporting for Fortune-on subjects as diverse as the Tennessee Valley Authority, commercial orchids, and cockfighting-and a sampling of his literary reviews, among them appreciations of William Faulkner, Virginia Woolf, S. J. Perelman, and William Carlos Williams.
Customer Reviews:
Film Writing and Selected Journalism.......2005-12-14
Includes the classic Agee on Film as well as the screenplay for the classic, chilling Night of the Hunter, this is a must read for film fans of the WWII era. Never shy to express an opinion, Agee wrote with great passion and intellegence about the films of the period. I was esp. impressed with the features he wrote for the fledgling perodical - The Nation. When he discovered a film he liked, he would delve into great detail on what interested him in the work (sometimes pieces would continue from one issue into the next). I also appreciated his willingness to say that a film touched a particular interest in him and might not be to the taste of all readers (can you imagine a critic doing that today - actually putting him or herself out there as just another spectator as opposed to a critical god....) As with the theatrical writings of Ken Tynan - a treasure.
Book Description
Chaplin and Agee charts the friendship between James Agee, author of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and Pulitzer Prize-winning A Death in the Family, and Charlie Chaplin, who starred in a staggering number of films from 1914 to 1967. This little-noted friendship yielded Agees first screenplay, written for Chaplins tramp character. First published here and not available anywhere else, The Tramps New World is set in a post-apocalyptic New York, so dark it was without precedent. The book also features many previously unpublished letters and photographs. As the story moves from Hollywood to Greenwich Village, these two iconic figures come to life.
Customer Reviews:
Wranovics for a friend..........2006-07-11
Notwithstanding back cover puff about a "deeply significant episode" or a "rough-hewn dazzling masterpiece by James Agee", it is difficult to understand what John Wranovics might have intended by this book. While not overtly denunciatory, it might certainly be taken as such, as it significantly detracts, perhaps inadvertently, from whatever "urban legend" might have grown up about Agee as some kind of super-intellectual, mid-century, Liberal saint.
Wranovics coolly details Agee's blatant use of his perch as The Nation's film critic as a platform from which to curry favor with Charles Chaplin, to whom he was--even while shamelessly stroking the little fellow in print--hustling a screenplay of his own.
Even though offering his pronouncedly puerile "treatment" quite gratis, asking nothing more for himself but permission to rub his forehead against the Great Man's trouser cuff, there's no eliding Agee's questionable ethics. It must have been enigmatic, not to say embarrassing, to friends and colleagues, for Agee to have taken on so extravagantly about the supposed excellences of Chaplin's then current and controversial "Monsieur Verdoux"--which he rated scarcely a tic or two south of Hamlet and Lear. (One's reaction to MV became a kind of political litmus test in those days, the cinematic equivalent of the Alger Hiss Case. It was somehow letting down the side to express dismay at it's snail's pace, all-around sub-standard trade craft, forced humor, and trite, petulant, adolescent philosophizing at the close) And the assemblage of over 100 pages of notes for Agee's famous, 4000 word, 3-part, Great American Review, must have left even well-wishers simply babbling. (It should not be surprising that among the literati (who are forever distilling profundities from the after-shave of prize fighters and matadors), the funniest fellow ever on roller skates ought to be closely attended to on questions of Faith, Morals, and Matters of State.
Chaplin had begun a pretentious, monomaniacal out-of-frame monologue at the close of "The Great Dictator", ( "I can't speak" "You must. Or we're doomed." or words to that effect) a Polonial mélange of middle school epiphanies he lost no opportunity to re-visit in every wretched "talkie" he made thereafter, and Agee's turkey of a "treatment" might, indeed, have been well suited to such juvenilities. Chaplin wasn't taking, though, even at the price, so "The Tramp's New World" became a lost "masterpiece" reprinted in 2005 with discreet rum-tum-tum by Palgrave Macmillan, and blurbed by The Village Voice as "an unmade movie so vivid that it practically sears the mind's eye." (There is apparently no "use by" date on litmus.)
The greatest shock to the system of any Agee groupie still left standing, however, is likely to be caused by a couple of letters Agee wrote to CC in early days. These are sniveling, cap-twisting, forelock-tugging, an-it-please-yer-Lordship unctuous-beyond-belief, "base spaniel fawning" of a kind that might be regarded as excessive even when addressing The Lord of the Universe in full regalia.
Remembering The Last Days Of Agee..........2005-09-28
Two major things I learned from this book are 1) James Agee had an obsession with Chaplain's character, Little Tramp, and 2) he was deathly afraid of the Bomb which America had created. Other supplemental things I may have rather not known is that he drank too much, could down a whole bottle of scotch and still not be drunk and, during the last month of his life, he had a total disregard for personal appearances. It is said tht he wore the same shirt, and hardly every changed clothes. He was allowed to basically die alone, like Dean Martin. Stardom is soon forgotten.
Those 'facts' I could have lived without knowing. Now, there is a group in Los Angeles called the 'Society of Singers' who help retired and elderly members of the movie world (Agee was part of that in a big way.)-- those destitute and in need. Chuck Southcott and Wink Martindale are members. As is fact, Agee died in May of 1955.
In the end, his life "was bookended by his admiration of Chaplain." The Tramp was his inspiration to his art and life from his earliest remembered childhood until the last days of his life. In the movie, that dad took Rufus to the Roxy theater across the L&N viaduct from the neighborhood where they lived, to see and laugh at Chaplain's "Tramp' silent features.
Agee's talent and his love for the poetic art of silent comedy films is shown in Part Two of this book. His previously unpublished screenplay was untitled when he died that fateful May, but here they call it 'The Tramp's New World.' He finished it in 1949, but no one ever considered making it. The premise was that only the innocence of childish adults could survive the Bomb. The scientists were safe in their underground shelters, but they have no real feelings or common sense. Its "timeless message of respect for humanity and the dignity of the individual are needed now more than ever."
Agee claimed to one and all that writing his autobiographical novel "was killing him." Sometimes it is best not to remember, or at least have a selective memory. It was named after his death and edited quickly, leaving much material on the wayside, to be published in an expedient way so as to use the publicity of his death. It won the Pulitzer Prize, a well-deserved reward for his work and hardship at the end.
I marvel at how the majority of people tend to think about the sordid or bad things which happened to an important person after they are gone instead of remembering the good they had achieved during their peak years. The same happened to my friend, Bob Lobertini. Helen Gee, in her memoir of Limelight, the photraphy gallery she founded and named after the Chaplain film, was one to dwell on the 'unmentionables.'
Agee was a native Knoxvillian, though he did not spend much time here after his mother remarried and moved up Northeast, and there is a marker on Cumberland with his name and history, a park named after him as well as one of the streets on the UT campus. He is remembered here as a 'native son' who did good out in Hollywood.
A story of Hollywood glamour, failure, disappointment, and heartache.......2005-06-25
CHAPLIN AND AGEE is the story of a screenplay and, as a result, has the right to be a little bit glamorous. Unfortunately, like a lot of screenplays, it is a story about failure, disappointment and heartache, but there's enough glamour along the way to compensate for it.
You may know the story of Charlie Chaplin, even though his best work is from the long-ago silent film era. CHAPLIN AND AGEE focuses on the latter part of his career, in the 1950s, when he is best known for his Communist political leanings, and the subsequent hounding he took for them from Senator Joe McCarthy and his followers. (Readers who are not convinced that McCarthy was the darkest character in modern American political life will find CHAPLIN AND AGEE slowgoing.) At this point, Chaplin is in the process of leaving his "Little Tramp" character behind (the Tramp's last appearance was in the 1940 classic The Great Dictator) and moving on to different fare.
Chaplin's 1947 film, Monsieur Verdoux, plays an outsize role in CHAPLIN AND AGEE as it never did in real life. The movie --- Chaplin's second talking picture, after a career making silent films --- is little-known or remembered today. It's a dark comedy where he plays a charming serial killer --- not the sort of thing that would resonate with postwar audiences. It is an utterly unimportant film, except to the extent that it is discussed here, and that is only because of its effect on novelist and film critic James Agee.
The screenplay at the heart of CHAPLIN AND AGEE is Agee's, and Agee was no slouch as a screenwriter. He did the screenplays for two of the most enduring films of the 1950s --- The African Queen and Night of the Hunter. As the book begins, the multitalented Agee is splitting his time between being a reporter for Time and doing movie reviews for The Nation. While at Time, he got the assignment to write up the magazine's report on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, which profoundly affected his worldview.
The result was The Tramp's New World, the screenplay that is the basis of John Wranovics's book and that takes up the latter third of the volume. The screenplay is for a Charlie Chaplin movie, and Wranovics deftly details the lifelong admiration that Agee had for Chaplin's work. The screenplay sets the Little Tramp in New York --- but a New York that has been destroyed in a nuclear explosion, leaving the Tramp the only survivor, exploring the burned-out buildings and horrible silhouettes of the dead. It is a screenplay that had been lost for years and only now has been recovered, and Wranovics is to be credited for his scholarship.
But the fascinating thing about The Tramp's New World is not the screenplay itself. In fact, the screenplay is quite near unreadable, with great masses of impenetrable stream-of-consciousness dreck and some ham-handed political parody. What's fascinating is the length that Agee went to bring it to Chaplin's attention. (Chaplin, reasonably enough, seems never to have given it any serious consideration.)
What Agee did, in his role as a film critic, is remarkable. He wrote his initial review of Monsieur Verdoux for Time magazine, and it was fairly noncommittal and unenthusiastic. But in The Nation, he changed his tune sharply, arguing in three different installments that Monsieur Verdoux was the best movie of the year and one of the best that he had ever seen. The Nation reviews are treated uncritically by Wranovics, as evidence of Agee's respect for Chaplin. But seen from a reviewer's perspective, especially given that this reviewer was trying to sell Chaplin a screenplay, they are embarrassing at best, horrifying at worst. Wranovics obviously admires Agee, even as he chronicles his slow descent into an alcoholic stupor. But CHAPLIN AND AGEE perhaps ought to be a bit more skeptical about Agee's motives than it is.
Wranovics does an excellent job of bringing Agee, and his times and his politics, to life. Even those not particularly interested in the novelist will find it an absorbing enough read. Those who are interested in the era, and scholars of Agee and Chaplin, will find the book to be a small treasure.
--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds, who writes movie reviews at TXreviews.com.
Average customer rating:
- Taken from the book's back cover
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Agee On Film Vol 2 Pa
James Agee
Manufacturer: Perigee Trade
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0399508716 |
Customer Reviews:
Taken from the book's back cover.......2004-03-20
Five film scripts by the author of A Death in the family:
Noa Noa
The African queen
The Night of the Hunter
The Bride Comes to Yellow sky
The Blue Hotel
As Gerald Weales wrote in The Commonweal, this volume "should be attractive not simply to students of film, but to anyone who really looks at the screen once he gets past the box-office."
James Agee was from 1941 to 1948 the movie critic for Time and from 1942 to 1948 he wrote the film column for The Nation. He then went to Hollywood and began writing the scripts collected here for such directors as John Huston and Charles Laughton. In 1958, three years after his death, his novel A Death in the Family was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Agee's film criticism is available as a Beacon Paperback under the title, Agee on Film: Reviews and Comments.
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AGEE ON FILM
Manufacturer: Mcdowell, Obolensky
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HDOV5U |
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Agee On Film
James Agee
Manufacturer: Grosset & Dunlap
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0720602157 |
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Agee on Film
James. Agee
Manufacturer: McDowell
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000HI862Y |
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Showbusiness: Diary/Rock 'n Roll Nobody
Mark Radcliffe
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ASIN: 1840321016 |
Product Description
Grandmaster Eingorn is an chess opening trendsetter. Throughout his career, he has introduced many novel concepts in the openings, and some of the systems he has introduced have gone on to become absolute main lines, such as the Rb1 Exchange Grünfeld. Here he explains the methods by which he prepares his openings and works out new systems from scratch, and how readers can do the same. The broad topics he discusses include Experiments in the Opening, Disturbing the Equilibrium, Strategic Planning, and Opening Formations. He follows this up with a section of examples from modern practice, and theoretical articles on several of the opening lines that he has pioneered, taking us through the creative process, and the highs and lows of the practical testing and refinement of the ideas.
Customer Reviews:
have chess books gotten really good lately, or is it me?.......2006-10-27
someone i read recently, maybe rowson in a column, points out that the way people use the word 'theory' and 'theoretical' in chess has almost the opposite meaning that it has in every other academic field. what chessplayers mean by theory is actually more like "recorded practice." this makes sense to me, and really what i think the chess community is trying to convey by using the word theory is more like "difficult" or "beyond the capacities of undedicated people."
my point in bringing this up is that eingorn's book is what should really be called theory. (don't let that scare you off, it's a beautiful, thoughtful, exciting book, and not insanely difficult.) it tackles the broader ideas in opening theory from a historical and philosophical perspective (i want to say sociologic as well, but that's perhaps ridiculous?), the way openings develop and what causes this. the games are nicely annotated and instructive, but the real strength is the clarity with which eingorn sees the big picture of chess.
i loved watson's books and rowson's; this one is on the same level.
Book Description
In a groundbreaking work, a Spanish grandmaster explains how creativity can be used to overcome technical obstacles on the chessboard.
Once they have obtained an advantage, too many players make the mistake of assuming that the exploitation of this advantge will just be a matter of technique, requiring accuracy, but little imagination. Romero shows, by examining the play of the great chess champions, that the opposite is often the case: sometimes it is the paradoxical solution that works, whereas the mechanical method would fritter away the hard-earned advantage.
By following Romero in his investigation of the many outstanding practical examples in this book, readers will inevitably increase their understanding of chess strategy in general and fine-tune their instinct for sensing those critical moments when non-standard solutions are necessary.
Customer Reviews:
Creative subject, wonderful book.......2005-02-20
There are two magnificent instructional chess books in my library that I return to time and again. One is Lessons in Chess Strategy by Valeri Beim, a masterful, entertaining and logical writer. The other book devotes haphazard amounts of space to quite a wide variety of middlegame situations, is less structured, even eclectic at times. That book is Creative Chess Strategy.
The author, Spanish Grandmaster Alfonso Romero, has chosen to cover a most interesting topic - situations where an advantage in position is best exploited by creative rather than technical means. Such situations are quite common, though easily overlooked if playing on auto-pilot. The path to victory is not always "just a matter of technique" and a player who chooses a routine course may often find his advantage fritters away.
Romero chooses the game Kramnik-Malaniuk, Moscow 2004, to illustrate "activity v material." Kramnik has a comfortable edge out of the opening (a Dutch Defense), and yet chooses to make a bold positional sacrifice of two pawns. Romero's point is that a world champion knows an advantage must be aggressively exploited in certain positions, even if the compensation for the sacrifice is not concrete.
Romero's book hops about from opening to opening and theme to theme, and I found it a joy to delve into at random. Open one page to witness the late legendary Boleslavsky sacrificing a pawn to plant a knight unopposed on the d5 square. That original game was played in 1956; now every grandmaster will know the concept. A few pages on there is Dolmatov sacrificing an exchange for positional compensation in the French Defense.
Most of the games given are exciting, fresh examples that I was unfamiliar with. Buy this fabulous book - you will read and reread it.
Good follow-up for Chernev's Most Instructive Chess Games..........2004-02-17
My chess tactics is weak; therefore I'm often banking on my experience with positional chess. Chernev's Most Instructive Chess Game ... is always my favorite. It taught me a lot about positional chess. One thing about Chernev's book, I could not understand its arrangement, not in chronological order, not in any particular themes, it's hard to remember (as a checklist during a game for: what can I do at this stage? what to do next if he exchanges his bishop for my outpost knight? etc.) Then I bought Nunn's Move-by-Move. Nunn's book is good and difficult. First his book is arranged in order of opening, middlegame and endgame; very nice. Second it's good because Nunn selected games of the "heavy-weight" players in the last 20 years or so. At this level the GMs try to carry out his plan while disrupting opponent's plan, so their plays are at very high level and sometimes very deceptive. That makes the book great and difficult (for my level).
Then one day I had to choose between Romero's Creative Chess Strategy and Marovic's Secrets of Positional Chess to buy. It's a hard choice because the words Secrets and Positional sounded so attractive. Now I am glad that I bought Romero's book. Together with other reviewers here and my own recollections, Marovic's book is more difficult and has many unfinished games. With comments like: +/=, =/=, -/=, at my level, it's like giving me the key (? ;-)) to space shuttle and ask me to fight around the earth a few rounds, bring it home safely and don't forget to look out the window to enjoy the view of the Grand Canyon and the Great Wall and Pyramid, and of course I have to pay for the trip and never have a flight training before. (I will buy Marovic's when I can understand it.)
Romero's theme arrangement is rather logical. The first three chapters are about Pawn structure, Space and Center; even it's hard to which order the Pawn Structure (more modern than other two) should appear. The next 4 chapters are about Bishop-pair, Blockade, IQP, and Control of Squares. Should the chapters about Blockade and IQP be chapters 4 and 5? Are they related to Pawn and Space? Not very clear because in the IQP chapter it mentions about the B-pair again and the Knight-pair (haven't read about this often since the games of Tchigorin and Reshevsky). And chapter 8 is about Attacking a Weak Center. Chapters 10 and 11 are about exchanging pieces and sacrifice. I think they should come after chapters 9 (Open and Semi-open files) and 12 (Knight-outpost and Rook-Knight Coordination). Exchange is when we want to improve our piece positions or to remove opponent's favorable pieces before or during an attack or defense; sacrifice is the last resort to achieve that goal, a minus in materials could spell disaster in a long run. Why doesn't chapter 13 (Dead Bishop) follow the B-pair chapter? Why is chapter 14 (Lack of Communication) away from chapters of Center and Blockade? Then after that is a chapter (15) about Attacking without Rules when a desperate win is needed or intuition suggests. At last, a chapter about positions where depending of taste, experience and skills, the GMs created. In those the normal considerations of mortal/low-level players like us fail to appreciate. Whichever side we take, we would lose to a player with 200-points higher.
Above is my personal opinion about Romero's book. He has very good reason to arrange it that way. I just hope I could create a checklist of what to do during the course of the game stage-by-stage.
Romero's is more logical than Chernev's, better for my level than Nunn's. It has lots of explanation which is very helpful, better than a bunch of variations and ended with +, -, =, which are comprehensible to me.
Correction: it's a 5 star book.
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A Concept of Dramatic Genre and the Comedy of a New Type: Chess, Literature, and Film
Vera Zubarev(aka Ulea)
Manufacturer: Southern Illinois University
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ASIN: 0809324520 |
Book Description
Applying systems theory to the comedies of Chekhov, Balzac, Kleist, Moliere, and Shakespeare, A Concept of Dramatic Genre and the Comedy of a New Type: Chess, Literature, and Film approaches dramatic genre from the point of view of the degree of richness and strength of a character’s potential. Its main focus is to establish a methodology for analyzing the potential from multidimensional perspectives, using systems thinking. The whole concept is an alternative to the Aristotelian plot-based approach and is applied to an analysis of western and eastern European authors as well as contemporary American film.
This innovative study consists of three parts: The first part is mostly theoretical, proposing a new definition of the dramatic as a category linked to general systems phenomena and offering a new classification of dramatic genre. In the second part, Ulea offers a textual analysis of some works based on this new classification. She analyzes comedies, tragedies, and dramas on the same or similar topics in order to reveal what makes them belong to opposite types of dramatic genre.
Additionally, she considers the question of fate and chance, with regard to tragedy and comedy, from the point of view of the predispositioning theory. In the third part, Ulea explores an analysis of the comedy of a new type—CNT. Her emphasis is on the integration of the part and the whole in approaching the protagonist’s potential. She introduces the term quasi-strong potential in order to reveal the illusory strength of protagonists of the CNT and to show the technique of CNT’s analysis and synthesis.
Ulea’s research begins with the notion of the comic, traditionally considered synonymous with the laughable, and attempts to approach it as independent from the laughable and laughter. The necessity to do so is dictated by the desire to penetrate the enigmatic nature of Chekhov’s comedy. The result is A Concept of Dramatic Genre and the Comedy of a New Type: Chess, Literature, and Film, a completely new approach to potential and systems thinking—which has never been a focus of dramatic theory before. Such potential is the touchstone of the comic and comedy, their permanent basic characteristic, the heart and axis around which the comedic world spins.
Customer Reviews:
Re- Thinking Chess concepts.......2007-01-09
Very good book for people with good knowledges, but with problems to aply in practice. Unortodox kind of thinking!
An insightful book on chess insight.......2003-12-14
I have owned this book for several years now, and it never gets old. When I find my chess skills lapsing into doldrums, I open this book and learn anew. This book is not meant for readers who are looking to an 'instruction manual' for creative chess, which is itself an oxymoron. But by showing the reader examples of chess creativity which are truly unforgettable (how many games of grandmasters' can one spend analysing, which merely rely on brute-force calculation?), Avni allows the reader to look at chess positions with new eyes. I highly recommend this book for any chess enthusiast either with an avid interest in the sheer beauty of the game or someone who is getting bored with his own playing style.
Like all his books, just examples.......2003-05-22
A book like this should teach creative chess, not just show examples of it. Too many chess books are like the juggler teaching juggling by saying, "watch this!" Then, he juggles and you say, "wow, that's amazing!" We don't really need a book to show us creative chess when we could look at any collection of games of top GMs and find more than enough creativity for a lifetime. The examples are entertaining, but I was disappointed because I expected more of an instructive manual.
Horizon - broadening.......2000-05-29
What I like about this book is the unusual examples put together by the author. Because that' s what this book is about: examples. And also a few creative games and exercices at the end. But mostly examples, and very interesting ones. Have you ever ran across a truly original combination in a chess book ? This book is only that. Combinations and ideas that will amaze you: an example puts a piece on a square where it can be taken by 4 enemy pieces, another sacrifices a rook which is captured with check, etc. Are you looking for an endgame book ? An opening one ? This book is none of the above (or a little of each), but get it !
Change Your Thinking, Change Your Chess.......2000-04-07
Most chess books aim to guide and instruct by offering principles, rules, schemes and theories. "Creative Chess", on the other hand, has a quite different and original approach. It firmly maintains that every chessplayer, whether amateur or master, is capable of creating something new in chess. After a discussion of the characteristics and processes of creativity, 10 central concepts, such as unusual positioning and functioning of pieces, alertness to subtle differences, absurd moves, flexibility, etc., are presented with a wealth of truly amazing examples to encourage the reader to broaden the horizons of his chess thinking. Whether or not the author's approach will improve your chess (I think it will), it is definitely a change of pace from your standard middlegame or opening text.
Average customer rating:
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Creative Chess
Fred Reinfeld
Manufacturer: Oak Tree Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NUTQ4S |
Average customer rating:
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Creative Chess
Fred Reinfeld
Manufacturer: Sterling Publishing Co
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
ASIN: B0000CKJI9 |
Average customer rating:
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Creative Chess
Manufacturer: Sterling
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000CCNUO4 |
Average customer rating:
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Executive Chess: Creative Problem-Solving by 45 of America's Top Business Leaders and Thinkers
Steven J. Bennett , and
Michael Snell
Manufacturer: Dutton Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
General
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ASIN: 0453005500 |
Average customer rating:
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An introduction to chess, the creative game
Allan G. Savage
Manufacturer: Prentice-Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Chess
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ASIN: 0134792610 |
Average customer rating:
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Mikhail Chigorin, the creative chess genius
Manufacturer: Caissa Editions
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding
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ASIN: 0939433052 |
Book Description
Although the pricing and hedging of derivatives contracts has been the subject of a large number of books, hardly any books exist on the actual design of derivatives contracts. Structured Equity Derivatives fills this gap in a remarkable way. The book introduces an approach to the structuring and practical application of derivatives that allows the reader to create his own derivatives solutions to an endless variety of problems. The approach is extremely natural - the only limit is the reader's own creativity.
Since it clearly explains the reasons why derivatives exist and why there is such a large variety, this is the book that should be read before picking up any other book on the pricing and hedging of derivatives. As the book concentrates on product design instead of pricing, there are no complex pricing formulas or numerical procedures. The emphasis is on intuition and common sense rather than complex formal results, which makes the book accessible to people from many different backgrounds.
Customer Reviews:
great book!.......2005-09-10
This is the best book on structured equity products so far, it is fun to read but never trivial.
Great introduction & overview.......2004-07-27
This is still a great introduction to the subject. Being familiar with the majority of current financial 'engineering' texts, I can honestly say this is still a very good book. It does what it claims to do - and sticks to the intended audience.
A nice book for starters..........2004-01-12
This is definitely a very useful book for students taking financial engineering courses or complete newcomers in the aera of structuring. The book's written in a very clear and approachable manner and the author doesn't bother you with obscur mathematics. However, being myself a structurer of derivative products, I must unfortunately say that this book didn't really improve my knowledge in the field of structuring. But since I believe that Dr. Kat's main objective was to primarily target newcomers in the area of structured products, and not any professionals working in the business, I still think that the book is a respectable achievement.
Finally!!!! A definitive guide for common sense people.......2002-05-23
This book offers readers, who have little knowlegde about structured products, the insides of it. It is easy to read and easy to understand. I bet the reviewer from New York and Seattle are in this business themselves, as to give this book such low ratings. These people are probably affraid that their clients will buy this book and find out later that they got ripped of by their ruthless bankers. If these people are in the business, they should not have bought the book it in the first place.... Go ask your colleagues!!!
It is true that the math is non-existent, but again there are loads of books written in english with loads of formulas in it that even most english speakers don't have a clue about, and most importanly, how to apply it. This is definitely a book on the side of the consumers of these products. Buy it, you won't waste your money!!!!
Good job Dr Kat!.......2002-05-15
Very good book on structuring of derivaties. Yes, this book is mainly on structuring not pricing and some reviewers seem to forget about that blaiming it on the lack of mind-boggling maths! Good one for someone who is new in the area or read some introductory books as Hull; everything is really decomoposed into easily understandable pieces so that you can understad every possible structure. Strong recommendation for those who want to _really_ understand structuring of derivatives.
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