This is a collection of games of Shusaku. It has information about Edo go, a biography of Shusaku, a section on the Shusaku fuseki, eighty games with reasonably lengthy commentary (averaging a little less than 5 pages/game), and about 60 more games with minimal commentary (typically 2 games/page).
It's a great book, and has as good a claim as any to being the best go book in English. Shusaku may have been the best player of all time, many of the games here are classics, and you'll enjoy playing through the games and learn a lot from doing so. I read through it as a 2 kyu, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing so and thought (or hope!) that I learned something from it, even though I didn't study the commentaries in detail; I expect that any mid-kyu or stronger would learn from it. (If you haven't read any other game commentaries, you might want to start with Ohira's Appreciating Famous Games, though.) This book is attractive, well thought-out, and a lot longer than any other go book out there, so you're getting a lot of stuff with it.
Kiseido was originally formed to publish this book, I think. The original version is in hardcover, with the pages about the size of Go World pages, and was distributed by Ishi. There were plans to do a whole series of such books on great Japanese go players, but they never materialized. (The book cost $75, so it wasn't a big hit; after it went out of print, though, a lot of people were left wishing that they had a copy.) Fortunately, Kiseido in its new incarnation has reprinted the book in paperback for $35, which is a good price considering how much more material there is in this book than in your typical go book.
Last modified: Sun Aug 10 20:53:19 PDT 2003