The great board game revolution is here-- What do these games tell us about our society, our relationships, and ourselves? "Games, Jonathan Kay and Joan Moriarity show in this lively and insightful book, are not just fun and games: they allow us to explore the complexities of the world, from evolution to war to climate." - STEVEN PINKER, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress "Kay and Moriarity are both skilled writers and elucidators, and their voices are distinct enough to provide the book with a pleasing yin and yang. It's a far more perceptive and intriguing book than it appears at first blush, particularly for those readers who have never thought of games as an artistic medium - at least not one that comments on society." - KIRKUS REVIEWS Board games are among our most ancient and beloved art forms. During the rise of digital media, they fell from prominence for a decade or two but today they are in a new golden age. They're ingeniously designed, beautiful to look at, and exhilarating to play. Games are reclaiming their place in our culture, as entertainment, social activity, and intellectual workout equipment. Alone among all art forms, games require their audience (called "players") to participate. If nobody's playing, there is no game. As a result, games can tell far more about us than our TV shows, movies or music ever could. How does The Game of Life illustrate our changing attitudes about virtue? How does a World War II conflict simulation game explain the shortcomings of a failed novelist? Each chapter of Your Move examines one game, and what it reveals about our culture, history, society, and relationships. The book's two co-authors bring the perspectives of a writer who plays, and a player who writes. Before Jonathan Kay began his distinguished career as an author and commentator, he had a passion for games, and in recent years he has rediscovered them. Meanwhile, Joan Moriarity's career has been spent designing, developing, distributing, art directing, recommending and teaching board games and, recently, writing about them for a wider audience. With its short, punchy essays, and beautiful photographs of the games themselves, every chapter will be a worthwhile read in itself, and the book overall will leave you inspired to discover the truths of your own inner and outer world through play -- whether you're a seasoned veteran or a total newcomer.

Any chess enthusiast knows how important tactics is in the "royal game" and how crucial it is to make a. thorough study of this aspect of the game. But up to now opinion has been divided on the best way of studying tactics. The well-known Soviet international, grandmaster and chess author Averbakh has developed an entirely novel approach, which is expounded in the present work. His main aim was to create a theoretical basis with whose aid the learner can effortlessly study the numerous and manifold tactical problems facing the chess player. Averbakh begins by examining the simplest situations resulting from confrontations between different pieces. He then proceeds to analyze more complex situations and demonstrates the importance of the double attack. With instructive examples he proves that double attacks in the broadest sense are the basis of most tactical operations. This discovery prompted Averbakh to focus his attention on the double attack in the first part of the book. The second part is devoted to combinations. The author delves into the question of what lies hidden behind the mysterious concept of harmony of pieces. The astonishing simplicity of the answer he finds to this question enables him to reduce the bulk of the combinations to a handful of basic elements. From this Averbakh derives a convincing definition of the term "combination" and introduces a new, promising system of classifying different combinations. All this is explained with the aid of numerous practical examples including complete games and chess problems. The book contains special chapters with numerous exercise problems for the reader to test and consolidate his newly-acquired skill. In this way Averbakh's work is both very instructive and easy to understand.

A great deal has been written about tactical play in the game of Diplomacy, but hardly anything on the best approaches to the negotiation side of the game. And yet it is the person-to-person interactions that give the game its distinctive character and which create the most interesting challenges. How do you form strong alliances? How can you tell if an ally is about to stab? Are there techniques you can use to break up the strong alliance of your opponents? In the Art of Correspondence in the Game of Diplomacy, Conor Kostick discusses these issues and many more. Through an in-depth analysis of the full correspondence of two classic games and through dozens of other examples, he offers a unique insight into what makes for effective negotiation in the game. This highly original contribution to the study of the game of Diplomacy is for readers who wish to improve their own play or who will enjoy witnessing the normally secret workings of the game, as players steer towards victory or disaster. Conor Kostick is an award winning military historian and novelist. He was an outright winner of Manorcon, one of Diplomacy's Grand Prix tournaments, and he was a member of the Irish Diplomacy team that won the world correspondence team championship in 2012.