Storming the Barricades by Larry Christiansen

Lessons in Attacking Chess from a Top American Grandmaster
New interactive ebook feature: each diagram is also a link to a lichess analysis board of that position!
"hugely enjoyable. All examples have been analysed in scrupulous detail ... an excellent manual" - GM Jon Speelman, The Independent

Many books provide training in how to round off a successful attack with a final combination, but that's really just the easy part. The difficult thing is to decide how and where to attack in the first place, and to build up the offensive without giving the opponent real counterchances.

Larry Christiansen is highly respected by his grandmaster colleagues for his ability to conjure up dangerous attacking chances from almost any position. In this book he takes more than 50 real-life positions, breaks each one down into its key elements and explains the right strategy for conducting a successful attack. The examples are selected to illustrate a wide variety of attacking themes and to provide an instructive and accurate picture of how modern players attack and defend.

"Christiansen reveals what he has studied to become a master tactician ... in contrast to many attacking books, Christiansen gives fresh examples from recent years, organizing them according to attacking principles" - GM Lubosh Kavalek, Washington Post

Grandmaster Larry Christiansen is one of the strongest American-born players of recent decades. He became a grandmaster in 1977, and has been a major figure in international chess for more than two decades. He was part of the team that won the World Team Championship in 1993 and has represented the United States in eight Olympiads, and was team captain in 1998. He is also a regular participant in events in Europe, including the German Bundesliga.

"Larry Christiansen has been renowned for more than 20 years as a fearless and redoubtable attacking player ... I found it an easy and entertaining book to read" - Alan Sutton, En Passant

"a true feast of initiative-based, dynamic, hard-hitting chess. It is also good to see a sparkling, modern selection rather than the same old classics that lovers of chess literature are so used to. The examples for Storming the Barricades are almost entirely drawn from the last three decades and even include games from 1999. It makes a fine textbook for attacking play for the new Millennium, especially for club-players and above" - GM Jonathan Levitt, Club Kasparov