New Purchase - The Games of War

If you're new to the hobby of wargaming, or are looking for an all encompassing book of rules that cover every era and every aspect of wargaming, "The Games of War" by John Bobek (ISBN-13: 978-1434330284) is the book to buy.  The material in this book is broad.  It has rule sets that cover:

• Ancients all the way to to the Modern era, 
• adaptations for fantasy and science fiction battles
• skirmish actions using 1/32 scale (54mm) to larger scale actions using smaller scale figures
• land, air, and naval warfare

The main reason that I purchased this book was for the chapter on using miniature wargames as lab exercises for teaching history.  The author is a teacher in the Chicago Catholic schools and did a fantastic job with these chapters.  I definitely would have been more interested in history as a kid if my history teachers found a way to make history "hands on" rather than memorizing dates, names and places.

This book is great for beginners or those looking to branch out and explore another, maybe unfamiliar era. The author does a great job introducing each era at the beginning of chapters and provides a comprehensive list of resources at the end of each chapter in case the reader wants to delve deeper.

There are a lot of additional resources out on BoardGameGeek.  Check them out here:
http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37718/the-games-of-war-a-treasury-of-rules-for-battles

Overall, this book is great value.  A paperback copy will cost you around $26.00.  But if your o.k. with electronic books, a .pdf copy will cost you just $3.00 on Amazon.com.  Check it out here:

• http://www.amazon.com/The-Games-War-Treasury-Soldiers/dp/1434330281/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375656568&sr=8-1&keywords=the+games+of+war