On Sep 7, 6:30 am, The Historian wrote:
I don't understand the venom Mr. Sloan is drawing for his publishing
efforts. His chess books get attacked on the newsgroups without being
seen. I understand being leery of ordering one because of Sloan's
reputation, but he's publishing, or republishing, interesting titles
at reasonable prices.

Has anyone purchased any of Sloan's chess books? I believe there's
another collection of endgames and a Weaver Adams title. Comments by
someone who has seen the books are welcome.

I know that in the case of his reprint of a Russian book from the
Soviet era, there was a debate about whether or not Mr. Sloan was
violating a copyright. Sloan contended that Soviet copyrights are no
longer binding or something like that. I don't know the letter of the
law or all the details, but if you have to look for a loophole to
publish something, I'd say that you're definitely violating the spirit
of the law, if not the letter. I would think he should have talked to
the original writer/publisher before reprinting that one.

In this case, it sounds like GM Benko asked Mr. Sloan to publish these
books for him. This was probably because of Sloan's experience as a
publisher, knowledge of how to get books listed on amazon.com, etc.
Since this one is fully endorsed by the original author, I can only
imagine that everyone's complaining because they don't like Sloan, and
not because of the details of this particular book.

As for whether or not I own any of Sloan's books, I actually have his
"Chinese Chess for Beginners", which is one of the few books that he
wrote himself. The syntax is out of date, but it's a very good
introduction to the game of XiangQi for anyone who's interested.

--Richard