A Way of Play for the 21st Century
This book was written by Go Seigen, and was published by Whole Board Press, which no longer exists as an independent publisher. The book is still available in the US from Slate and Shell and Schaak en Gowinkel het Paard as of July 2008.
Reviews
David Carlton's review
Matthew Macfadyen's review at British Go Association
crux's review
Tamsin: I've owned a copy for the last two years, but have never been able to get into it...until now. Now I am absolutely enthralled by the way Go Seigen unfolds the mysteries of go strategy, explaining and illustrating how different lines of play affect the whole-board situation. I think it will take many readings for me to extract real benefit from it, but that is probably the rub with any profound wisdom -- understanding it requires effort.
DeaconJohn (8k) For fuseki concepts this is the most useful book I have ever read. I thoroughy enjoyed Seigen's fluid style of writing and his wonderful explanations of his approach to fuseki (from his later years).
This book is devoted to the same topic as the two volume work Whole Board Thinking in Joseki. Please see my comments on that page for a high-level comparison of the two books.
Also, please see David Carlton's review. The only point I would disagree with in Carlton's review is that I think that this book is suitable for any SDK, not just for 5k and up. Working out the details in the variations that Seigen gives was a rewarding, and not particularly difficult, experience for me. I found those details to be on about the same level as volume three of the four volume work Graded Go Problems for Beginners.
Uberdude A good book full of interesting opening ideas. However, I think reading this made me lose rather than win games. I tried out some of the fuseki ideas and ended up doing badly once I had to think on my own instead of using sequences from the book. This is perhaps because Go Seigen's style is rather subtle, flexible and high level so it is harder to emulate than a more boring "I'll just grab some territory" pro like Kobayashi Koichi.
Tapir (1d KGS): I read this book as shodan, when I was stuck with my opening play and without ideas where to start thinking again. Now, I wish I could write about the wisdom of this book and how it revealed new ideas to me, but honestly, it was a major disappointment. It left me confused and I gained literally nothing from it, for which I may have to blame myself, but still I would not advise anybody to commit too much effort to this book before being ready. Personally, I found The 3-3 Point Modern Opening Strategy much more useful to develop an understanding of what to think about during the opening, that is as an introduction to whole board thinking, than this volume. People half-way between Go Seigen and mere tickling shodans may learn a huge amount from Go Seigen's studies, people still struggling with the basics are advised to avoid it for the time being.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Study of Nirensei Chapter 2 Study of Komoku (3-4 Point) Chapter 3 Study of Corner Approach Moves Chapter 4 Toward the 21st Century Chapter 5 Study of Actual Games
Sample Material
PDF presentation of several pages from the book.