Description

Summary:

The Way to Play, circa 320 pages, first published in 1975.

From the dust jacket:

"All over the world people play games: from primitive tribesmen to restless executives, and from birthday toddlers to aging millionaires. Wherever people gather, competition - and love of competition - appear.

Even the lone mind seeks the stimulus of games, and in a sense the opponent is still the same. It is always fickle Fate - or our own limitations! - that we are trying to defeat. Games rise and fall in popularity, appear and disappear. Inventiveness, and love of novelty, are always modifying the old and devising new. Games have lives, histories, and family trees. Few of us today have heard of the medieval mine men's morris; but millions of hours are spent on bridge, and chess, and Monopoly - and millions of dollars at poker or roulette. This book covers games that the reader will have seen or heard about - family games and social games, games played for fun, and games played for profit. But it includes, too, many that will be strange: games from foreign countries and ancient times. All are presented through a unique blend of text and illustration. Here the reader can learn not only the secrets of bridge or chemin de fer, but also how to play pachisi or nyout, lasca, or hex, or go. In addition to clearcut, concise rules, the players and equipment each game needs are listed, while the guide on pages 316-317 groups games together according to the number of participants they require. With a little thought, then, it is easy to arrange and even improvise to try an unfamiliar game - whether to make a party go, or to keep a houseful of children quiet! This book will tempt the reader to relax and experiment. It will let him soon settle those old rules disputes. It will be a friendly guide to those games that "everyone else seems to know". We believe that it is unique - a unique aid to leisure. It is, in fact, the major reference book of how to play the games of the world."