Starting Out: the English (Starting Out - Everyman Chess)

This book covers some lines of the English. That's all. Although other reviewers have claimed it to be a "comprehensive guide to the English" that isn't true. First, this book is very thin. Seeing all the transpositions in the English, which McDonald mentions without telling anything about them, it makes more sense to make a longer book dealing with positional ideas in all sections of the English. Speaking of positional ideas, this is where McDonald does a good job. In the first 3 chapters McDonald explains about the Symmetrical English, giving lines, well-annotated illustrative games (Andersson-Seirawan is particularly good), and well-written summaries of plans for white and black. After this, however, McDonald loses his interest. If the rest of the book had been like the first 3 chapters, it would be 100 pages longer and I would have given it 5 stars. However, after writing extensively on transpositions and almost every move white or black can play in the Symmetrical English, in the later sections McDonald gives critical lines as merely possible, and gives 1 measly illustrative game for each section of the Nimzo-English, even for some of the sharpest and most complicated lines. After seeing white demolish black readers with barely any of the annotations McDonald is most famed for, readers are left wondering if this line isn't simply a forced win. McDonald seems to imply that black has chances, without describing what they are. After mentioning some lines (1.c4 f5 and 1.c4 c6) he goes on to the next chapter assuming he has covered them without so much as a single illustrative game. Maybe I am being a bit harsh. McDonald has produced a fine book, but it is not in the league of his other works.