Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style (Elephant Paperbacks)

Book Description

Worringer's classic study argues that in historical periods of anxiety and uncertainty, man seeks to abstract objects from their unpredictable state and transform them into absolute, transcendental forms. With an Introduction by Hilton Kramer.

Customer Reviews:

A fantastic read of early modern theory.......2007-05-14

Without writing a summary, I have to say that this book was delightful. It gives an excellent perspective on western thought in the early 20th century.
I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in art theory, art history, architectural history, or just generally interested in the modern movement.

One of the key documents of modern art.......2007-05-13

Published in 1908 , this doctoral dissertation of Wilhelm Worringer soon became the most valid theoritical support for Expressionism.Elaborating the idea of Riegl's "kunstwolen"(roughly means the will to create)Worringer suggested that the history of art is the history of artistic intentions raher than the artistic skills which culminates in the scientific observaton of the external world and became a Greco-Roman-Reaissance tradition.Empathy ,on he oher hand,is a subjective approach to aesthetics and fails to exlplain the arts outside the European tradition.So a more fundamental phychology is needed and Worringer showed that how this "will to form" at any period of human history is related to a man's surrounding world which causes him insecurity and fear. Art is a responce to overcome this constant flow of randomness and becomes a corrective to this feeling by means of creating permanent asthetic forms. Great book .Physical shape and large font of this book is highly satisfying.Also read author's "Form in Gothic".

Classic treatise on man's urge to create.......2003-02-14

Breaking man's urge to create down to the point of a dialectic battle between his level of comfort with the surrounding environment, Worringer outlines the historical balance between our urge to make what we perceive concrete (through abstraction) or organic (through empathy). This classic dissertation argues it is only by finding a state of equipoise between these two urges that art can make a lasting connection with any generation.

Recommended for all those interested in advancing art and design evaluation beyond mere opinion.

Average customer rating:
Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style
Wilhelm (Michael Bullock, translated) Worringer
Manufacturer: International Universities Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0710023278

Average customer rating:
Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style
Wilhelm Worringer
Manufacturer: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000GL9IJM

Average customer rating:

nice quick reference guide

Oil Painter" Poct Palette

May save me a lot of paint

The Oil Painter's Pocket Palette
Rosalind Cuthbert
Manufacturer: North Light Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Using Color | Instructional & How-To | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
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Problem Solving for Oil Painters: Recognizing What's Gone Wrong and How to Make It Right

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Fill Your Oil Paintings With Light & Color

Oil Painting Secrets from a Master

ASIN: 0891345434

Customer Reviews:

nice quick reference guide.......2005-02-12

I started in oil paints a couple years ago and found this book a great help. There are so many different color paints on the market this helped narrow down to the essentials. The mixes recommended for skin tones has been a nice springboard to jump from. Definately worth the money.

Oil Painter" Poct Palette.......2002-05-01

I do not own the book as yet but My Instructor at the College I attend loaned it to me as I was having a difficult time trying to mix the right colors of sand for my seascape painting. I was very pleased to experiment with the colors used in the book and was able to get the final results I was looking for.

May save me a lot of paint.......2000-10-15

I like the book. One (typical) page of this book shows color swatches of raw sienna mixed with 12 other colors. Each color mixture is tinted and tinted more. One would think that a skilled artist should have mastery of his/her colors --so that this book really isn't needed. Maybe so. On the other hand, it might be nice to buy two copies and mount the pages for easier reference.

Customer Reviews:

A classic.......2003-11-04

This book was one of the few books available regarding
animation how-to when published two decades ago. It's a classic, full of eternally useful information and
deserves more respect than sales rank 1,036,479.

Average customer rating:

The Complete Kodak Animation Book

Manufacturer: Eastman Kodak Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000GWVPOC

Average customer rating:
ORBIT - Volume 1, number 2 - 1953: Potential Enemy; Exploiter's End; The Mating of the Moons; A Traveler in Time; Tony and the Beetles; Place of Meeting; Luna Escapade; Time and the Woman; The Butterfly Kiss; Museum Piece
Jules (editor) (Mack Reynolds; James Causey; Kenneth O'Hara; August Derleth; Philip K. Dick; Charles Beaumont; H. B. Fyfe; G. Gordon Dewey; Arthur Dekker Savage; John Christopher) Saltman
Manufacturer: Hanro Corp
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000I4A454

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Traveler Of The Moon Volume 2
Lee Na Hyeon
Manufacturer: Infinity Studios
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Comics & Graphic Novels | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1596970626

Book Description

When most girls ask their parents for a pet, they either get a cat or a dog. In Yuh-Ur's case, she ends up with a bat that is actually a cute, funny vampire! Come and emerge yourself in an alternate world where magic is taught at high schools and vampires are a dangerous yet virtually extinct race. Traveler of the Moon intricately brings together a well told love comedy through the perspectives of various characters.

Book Description

Firsthand knowledge and advice on every aspect of forming a film production company can be found in this one source. Film production company owners, entertainment attorneys, accountants, and distributors answer the most commonly asked questions on forming and running a successful film production company. They provide proven tips for setting up shop, following a financial plan, working with investors, forming a marketing strategy, getting a film distributed, and more. Real-life anecdotes from a wide range of professionals from the production company trenches are both informing and entertaining.

Customer Reviews:

Great Start Up Resource For Any Clueless Film Production Owner!!!!!!!!!.......2007-04-17

Jumpstart Your Awesome Film Production Company by Sara Caldwell was a great read to this film production owner just starting out!!! I feel some really basic questions I had where answered! Thanks for writing this 'gem' Sara Caldwell! Keep up the good work and I hope our paths cross someday :) FILMMAKERS GO OUT AND GET YOUR COPY TODAY!!!!!!

Packed with great ideas........2006-10-15

These fine guides will help film producers and animation artists, providing specific industry-tested tips and insights. Sara Caldwell's JUMPSTART YOUR AWESOME FILM PRODUCTION COMPANY follows the steps necessary to turn the dream of a film into reality, using real-life stories from many filmmakers to review pros and cons, challenges along the way, and more. From creating a financial plan and locating and working with investors to making industry contacts and promoting a film, JUMPSTART YOUR AWESOME FILM PRODUCTION COMPANY is packed with great ideas.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Jumpstart your awesome film production company.......2005-09-09

I appreciate the instruction, examples, and experiences in the book. It is well worth the information as an overview to help set up your first business. Half of the book was the stories of tiny struggling young wannabes that are finally having some success. The other half was useful to direct and warn against pitfalls. I welcome a second, advanced book that would fill in the actual procedures, budgets, infrastructure, and daily activities from a seasoned stronger feature film producing company. This book is a good start and I recommend it.

Customer Reviews:

Utter Garbage, Even By Rock Book Standards.......2007-04-09

The world of rock journalism is rife with shoddy writing, biased agendas, unfair ad hominem barbs, and sub-Nietzschean posturing. While this literary school has produced many noteworthy opinionated hacks, such as Robert Christgau, Albert Goldman, et al., Geoffrey Giuliano may very well be the prime exponent of this proud tradition.

Blackbird is, to put it simply, an utter waste of time, space and sorely needed trees. As some other reviewers have already mentioned, Giuliano's primary sources are disgruntled McCartney ex-employees, as well as the ex-wife of one of those ex-employees: of whom the author is apparently obsessed with, as he fawns over her incessantly in print, and has several pictures of her included. This is a little odd, as the book is ostensibly about Paul McCartney. (Giuliano also has numerous pictures of himself included in the photo spread, much to our collective indifference).

But it's one thing to produce a readable book that is filled with unreliable smear; it's quite another to produce an unreliable book that is rendered unreadable by sleazy, melodramatic prose. Giuliano is the veritable poster-child of such prose.

If you must read this, then be sure to check it out of your local public library. This book was, I think, the first McCartney bio, and accordingly most public libraries have a copy. And if you absolutely must buy this, then be sure to check out your local used-book store, as the one I shop at has about 7 copies of this tripe for sale.

Worthless.......2007-03-24

What a waste of money. This book is lame, inaccurate and boring. The author just rehashes most of his material from other biographies and uses very unreliable sources, and I use the word loosely. Jo Jo whoever she is, seems to have a major ego problem since every man, including Paul Mccartney, wanted her and Linda was insanely jealous. This nobody (Jo Jo) condemns the Mccartney's for drug use, but talks about her own insanely outrageous drug addiction where she's stealing for drugs and it seems making up stories to sell to this hack of a writer for this useless book.

Glad to hear the truth!!.......2004-07-17

Finally an author who didn't see the need to act like Paul was a God or saint or something. I think there needs to be more books like this about Paul that don't hide the real him or whom he marries etc.

Modified character assassination.......2003-12-29

Geoffrey Giuliano seems to be deeply conflicted about Paul McCartney. On the one hand, he acknowledges Sir Paul's awesome musical genius by commenting favorably about a number of his songs in the book. On the other, he seems determined to trash his subject's reputation by seeking out and quoting at great length two people he knows will "dish dirt" -- whether true or not is a matter of opinion -- about the ex-Beatle; that is, Denny Laine and Jo Jo Laine.
A few of the incidents in the book also have a "made up out of whole cloth" feel about them, such as John Lennon's supposedly smashing a window in Paul's house on one occasion, and ripping a painting from the wall and demolishing it on another. In neither case, as Giuliano tells it, does McCartney do anything to retaliate or get back his own -- just stands there in frustrated impotence. Is this intended to make McCartney look like a weakling -- not quite a "real man" -- and Lennon to appear as a daring, macho "tough guy?" Remember, the book Giuliano wrote about Lennon was titled "John Lennon, My Brother," which might lead one to believe he idolizes Lennon and wants to tear down McCartney as a definite threat to that idol.
If you hate Paul McCartney, you'll love "Blackbird."

I would've given it half a star.......2003-02-03

I did read another book by this particular author and although I found it thoroughly amusing I just thought he wrote it for entertainment. There were obviously not enough people that had said actual good things and it just seems like her rounded up people that really disliked Paul McCartney and I know that everyone isn't angelic but he didn't just bend the halo, I thought it was pretty low the way he basically stripped her of her integrity with a full on attack.

Blackbird The Life and Times of Paul McCartney

Average customer rating:

Blackbird The Life and Times of Paul McCartney
Geoffrey (Intro, Denny Laine) Giuliano
Manufacturer: E.P. Dutton & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: 0075510669

Average customer rating:

Blackbird the Life and Times of Paul McCartney
denny laine geoffrey giuliano
Manufacturer: E.P. Dutton & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OGSHLO

Average customer rating:

Like looking under a rotten log

An edge-of-your-seat read.

Interesting And Informative

Informative & humorous!

The Crazy World of Competitive Scrabble

Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive ScrabblePlayers
Stefan Fatsis
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0142002267
Release Date: 2002-07-30

Amazon.com

Like a cross between a linguistic spy and a lexicographic Olympic athlete, journalist Stefan Fatsis gave himself a year to penetrate the highest echelons of international Scrabble competition. Word Freak is the account of his journey. It's a wacky grab bag of travelogue, history, party journal, and psychological study of the misfits and goofballs whose lives are measured out in Scrabble tiles.

Fatsis gives us all the facts about Scrabble--from the story of the down-on-his-luck architect who invented the game in the 1930s to the intricacies of individual international competitions and the corporate wars to control the world's favorite word game. He keeps the reader turning the pages as we get involved in the lives of the Scrabble obsessives: men and women who have a point to prove against the world and have chosen Scrabble as their playground and their pulpit. As Fatsis goes on his own quest to attain the coveted 1600 rating, we actually get obsessed with him as he lies awake at night pondering moves and memorizing lists of words. For anybody who is interested in words, Word Freak provides an entertaining and absorbing read. --Dwight Longenecker, Amazon.co.uk

Book Description

Scrabble may be truly called America's game. But for every group of "living-room players" there is someone who is "at one with the board." In Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis introduces readers to those few, exploring the underground world of colorful characters for which the Scrabble game is life-playing competitively in tournaments across the country. It is also the story of how the Scrabble game was invented by an unemployed architect during the Great Depression and how it has grown into the hugely successful, challenging, and beloved game it is today. Along the way, Fatsis chronicles his own obsession with the game and his development as a player from novice to expert. More than a book about hardcore Scrabble players, Word Freak is also an examination of notions of brilliance, memory, language, competition, and the mind that celebrates the uncanny creative powers in us all.

"Fatsis . . . writes with affectionate zeal about the game and the fraternity of brilliant, lonely, and otherwise dysfunctional oddballs it attracts." (The New York Times)

"Word Freak has an impassioned subtitle, and it lives up to every word." (People)

Customer Reviews:

Like looking under a rotten log.......2007-07-18

Word Freak is an impressive job, maybe even amazing. How in the world could someone crank out a 372-page book on Scrabble that more or less lives up to the reproduced blurbs: can't-put-it-down narrative; marvelously absorbing; impassioned; thoughtful, winning; etc. Bob Costas summed it up: "Scrabble. Who knew?"

But they forgot to mention: no fun; disgusting; revolting; no missed opportunity to rub an obscenity in the reader's face; America's most beloved board game befouled by uncivilized worms; like sitting down to Mark Twain and getting the Godfather. I doubt I'll ever feel clean again. As an English player said about the Americans: "I can't imagine being any of them."

Sordidness aside, it's hard to imagine anyone not already brainwashed into the cult of tournament Scrabble not coming away from the book with a feeling of serious Scrabble being a perfectly ridiculous activity. Scrabble was invented as a word game, but you'd have to look mighty hard at a tournament Scrabble board to find anything to do with one's spoken, written, or reading vocabulary - no matter how intelligent or educated, or how much of a word lover, you are.

Early on, Fatsis tells about watching a game between two experts that seems to be in a "foreign language." He reports that there are devoted Scrabble players, even, who think more people would join up if the dictionary "didn't include so many strange or obsolete words." How could they not?

A top player says, "It's very frustrating to me that we have not yet managed to develop an audience for the game." Gee, I wonder why that is. This player's own brother points out (112 pages later) that a tournament Scrabble board "would look like Greek to its prospective audience."

The list of valid Scrabble words for international play is called SOWPODS. Players opposed to SOWPODS say that its supporters are "a handful of elitist snob experts who play in the world championships and are trying to ram 40,000 ridiculous words down the throats of the masses." I second that. Or, I would if it mattered. All my Scrabbling is with a collegiate dictionary, and I don't see any signs of an apostasy on the horizon.

Fatsis states, "It's just about impossible to play high-level (or even low-level) competitive Scrabble if you're hung up on the game's use of odd words." His saving grace there is the hedge, "just about". I offer myself as living proof that there is no problem whatsoever playing competitive Scrabble with a collegiate dictionary. None.

American tournament rules allow bluffing, and so a bluffing game Scrabble has become. Whoopee. Fatsis reports on some of the highest scoring Scrabble games. A Chicago player scored 792 - "but he used four phony bingos." A Cincinnati student scored 724 - "but his opponent was an 83-year-old newcomer... who let him get away with five phonies."

How can anyone write that or read that without turning all shades of red with embarrassment? Where else in all of our competitive sports and games is there anything like it? Did Babe Ruth get credit for home runs by striking out? Did he rack up his home runs in sanctioned games with kiddies and grannies and a 150-foot fence?

Here's one of the author's own anecdotes from a tournament: "I open with a deliberate phony, MEAOW. On her next turn, she takes the bait, pluralizing the fake word, and I challenge that off the board and gain a turn... At the next table, one of the old-timers watches the sequence. 'You've become one of us,' she says." Sounds like too much fun to me; guess I'll never be "one of them."

In another passage, a former top-rated player explains why he quit Scrabble. He objected to having to play inferior players, from whom he had almost nothing to gain, rating-wise, and everything to lose. "Given this environment, one must play phonies... to steal games that are seemingly out of reach." In other words, if he were constrained to playing real words, he would lose now and then. Excuse me while a grapefruit-sized tear rolls down my cheek.

You know from my Scrabble pages what I think of phonies. If that asinine component of Scrabble were eliminated, Fatsis' book could have been half as thick. And maybe a reader or two might have come away thinking, "Hey, this Scrabble, it could be a pretty neat game!"

Actually, world competition uses the "free challenge" rule, what I call "no-risk challenge" (or simply "double-checking"). In one game a player challenges ZAMIAS, a baby word for the pros. He's accused of "buying some time to think." Fatsis declares, "It's one of the perils of the free challenge rule." Somehow, in the other 371 pages of the book, he forgets to list all the other perils of such a lame-brain rule, which, by the way, was the box-top rule until the mid-1970s. Hmmm, mid-1970s . . . tournament Scrabble emerging . . . Who tricked or strong-armed Selchow & Righter into changing the box-top, and thereby turning Scrabble into a barroom bluff game after 25 years of class?

If Fatsis recognizes the two-letter words as anything more significant in Scrabble play than teensy words, he doesn't let on. He writes near the beginning, "Armed with the two- and (most of the) three-letter words, I can now beat casual players handily." Right. And armed with an AK-47 you can beat a guy with a water pistol at 20 paces. Handily. The two-letter words are the game's basic equipment, the tools. Any game in which a player is "unequipped" with the acceptable two-letter words is a meaningless exercise, a total waste of everybody's time.

Fatsis counts the K among the power tiles. I remember people in the Bowie Scrabble Club (Maryland) who did the same. I don't get it. It's nowhere near the category of the J, X, Q, and Z. Any one of those tiles played on a triple-letter score, all by itself, nothing else, would score 24 or 30 points. That's far greater than the average points per turn of an excellent player (using a conventional dictionary). The K would score a piddly 15 points. That's about equal to the average points per turn of the weakest novice in a Scrabble club. The K - you can have it.

Fatsis made use of a funny little word, "pesty", in his text. Twice, even. This was not a word in the original OSPD, a concoction of five major dictionaries. Back then, if anyone accidentally said "pesty", he was really trying to say "pestiferous". But it sounds so right that PESTY was always popping up on Scrabble boards. I wonder if it became a real word somewhere along the line largely because Scrabblers willed it.

Worth the price of admission was the chapter on the inventor of Scrabble, Alfred Butts, and the man who put the finishing touches on it (including the name), James Brunot. Now there's a classy story! The chapter stands out like an enchanted isle inthe middle of an ocean of sewage.

It disappoints me greatly that Scrabble players are ranked according a "rating" with an obscure and complicated calculation. I trust it shows where the players stand relative to each other, but what sort of absolute meaning does it have? If there's some reason not to simply calculate average points per turn (PPT), it eludes me. What makes PPT perfectly valid is that you always play the same number of turns as your opponent, on the average. It's insensitive to opponent, except maybe in the far-fetched case of collusion. And how long can you hope to go around playing the same chum who blithely spends his life setting you up? To be the best player, you have to be able to extract a fraction of a point more per play than anyone else. Period.

So if somebody calculated these guys' average points per turn, I would have an idea how I compare. But since their scores are so affected by the arbitrary 50-point scrabola (bingo) bonus, I'd also be interested in an average points per turn without the bonuses added in, and a separate scrabola statistic, such as average number of turns between scrabolas. If you say, "But they throw away a lot of points in order to make scrabolas!" I say, so do I.

I wish I had enough money to run a major tournament using my club rules: a collegiate dictionary; no-risk challenge; 3-letter minimum; and tiles dispensed to the players from a drum with a mixture of a hundred sets. Now that would be fun to watch and play along with. Just think, all those guys who spent years memorizing tens upon tens of thousands of official Scrabble letter combinations having to downshift to a real dictionary to go for the biggest Scrabble pot ever offered! Heeheehee. The winner might even be a reasonably smart, regular person.

Fatsis observed: "Recruiting new players is Scrabble's toughest task." No mystery there; just read the book. He gives 372 pages of reasons.

An edge-of-your-seat read........2007-07-14

Stephen Fatsis writes a fast-paced, edge-of-your-seat book on the quirky, obsessive, very male-dominated world of competitive Scrabble playing. Although the cast of characters is fascinating enough, I was more interested in Fatsis' own transformation from "living room" player to a high-ranking qualifier in major tournaments. He describes his initial frustration at losing to the blue hair set to even more frustration at not grasping expert game strategies. He learns that in order to become a champion Scrabble player, you have to make it your life: study constantly, develop anagramming skills, memorize 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 letter words and their modifiers, and learn and re-learn the combinations of letters to make all-important bingos (the 50 point bonus earned by using all 7 letters on your rack). Some of the ways that top players study range from obvious (flash cards) to the insane (memorizing complex pneumonic phrases).

The game is also not without its controversies, not the least of which is the Official Word List which is in need of major revisions, cites often obscure words some of which are not in any dictionary, and is censored of "objectionable" words. Not to mention that overseas competitions use British words as well, allowing thousands of additional playable words. Included in all this is a fair chunk of Scrabble history including the odd fact that it is owned by two games companies. (Hasbro only has the North American rights, Mattel the rest of the world). "Word Freak" contains the elements of riveting sports writing told by the aspiring insider

Interesting And Informative.......2007-05-14

As a pretty good 'living room' Scrabble player, I have recently learned that there is a world of difference between even very good hobbyist players and tournament players. I began playing occasionally with a medium rated tournament player who is leaps and bounds ahead of me. In comparison to the top tier players highlighted in this book, even my competitor (who seems like an expert to me) is a journeyman.

That leads to me to getting this book which focuses on a number of players who are among the very top tier in North America. They are quite an interesting lot. Mr. Fatsis has done a good job of making this book highly interesting and informative. Some of the characters here are rather quirky, which is not surprising when many of them live their lives around a board game, no matter how good. He does also portray some of the top tier players who are quite well balanced and would be considered more normal to the general population.

Not only is this book very interesting about a very unusual subculture, it also has several rather good tips on improving one's game. I recommend it for anyone who is a big Scrabble fan.

Informative & humorous!.......2007-04-20

Just love this book! being a Scrabble lover, I couldn't resist it! I learned a lot about techniques, but above all I felt I'd experienced what I'd always wondered about: what it would be like to go far in the world of big-time scrabble. I've improved my scores by 50 points+ since reading this enjoyable book!

The Crazy World of Competitive Scrabble.......2007-04-09

In Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis claims the ranks of normal Scrabble experts are plentiful, but instead chooses to focus on the lives of antisocial, reclusive and at times creepy champion players who appear to be in more abundance.

Take world champion GI Joel Sherman for example: The GI refers to Joel's gastro intestinal problems, one of his plethora of maladies. He carries with him a portable expectoration cup for his frequent muciod needs, has bug paranoia, suffers from Asthma and allergies (food included), has sacs under his sad eyes, has had a ton of dental work over the years, gets gas attacks from just about anything, is lactose intolerant, suffered from the thyroid condition Graves' disease at one point, and has frequent anxiety. He retired at 29, lives with his father and brother, and plays Scrabble professionally. His study time is after midnight, when he spends hours studying board position and posting his analyses to Scrabble sites on the internet. He considers Scrabble as his reason for existence.

It is precisely because of GI Joel's and all other misfit expert players' profiles that Word Freak is a joy to read. The book takes an interesting turn as Mr. Fatsis himself morphs partially into one of these word freaks as he sets out to attain his goal of achieving a 1,600 rating and thereby expert status. During this process, he befriends and rooms with many of his subjects. Therefore, his work on this book can be hardly viewed as objective.

Fatsis, and most other serious Scrabble players complain that Scrabble has never gotten the respect and recognition it deserves. Hasbro, which is the owner and sole manufacturer and distributor of Scrabble in the United States does not adequately promote the game, they complain. Fatsis has the perfect response why this is so - Scrabble's annual sales of $20 million and change pales in comparison to Hasbro's $3 billion in revenues. Besides, who wants to watch experts go head to head in a game that hardly resembles what most casual players like me play in their living rooms and during flights? As Fatsis explains, tournament Scrabble play is not a game familiar to the casual observer, and the rules are quite different as well.

The prize money in the largest tournaments are $20K-$30K. That, coupled with the hours of daily study required to reach expert level turn competitive play into a freak magnet; if you can afford to dedicate your life to the game, you just may become an expert player, but first you have to be able to support yourself while unemployed.

Anyone who is into competitive games, whether a Scrabble player or not would find this book at least entertaining.

By the way, the word "Ka" combines with any of the letters in "Betsy's Feet" to form words that can be used in Scrabble. That and countless other hints and strategies are discussed in the book.

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