Games: Learn to Play, Play to Win (Daniel King)

In Games, chess master Daniel King covers a history of the hobby, followed by brief introductions to:
- board games like Nine Men's Morris, Backgammon, Go, Chess, Mancala, and Checkers
- card games like Rummy, Cribbage, Whist, Spades, Hearts, Blackjack, and Poker

Unfortunately, this book wasn't great; both the history and game overviews felt too short to be useful.  That said, I did learn a few things of interest:
- Go is said to have been invented ~2000 B.C. in China by the Emperor to strengthen the mind of his son; or "it may have developed from a way of predicting the future from the stars"
- Archaeologists have found evidence of board games in ancient Middle Eastern, Indian, and Chinese civilizations; many "appear to have developed from religious ceremonies in which an early type of die was thrown in order to predict the future."
- Backgammon was popular in medieval Europe
- A Book of Games was written in 1282 for the King of Castile, Alfonso the Wise
- "The oldest complete game board was discovered in the royal graves of Ur"
- The royal game of Ur dates back to ~2500 B.C. in the Middle East
- Mancala is African in origin; Chess Asian (the latter dates from around A.D. 600)
- Playing cards "arrived in Europe in the 1370s from the Middle East"; by the 1400s the craze was present in all levels of society

Tidbits aside, this can be skipped.

Rating: C