Go book

I picked up a cool Go book over the weekend, Go! More Than a Game! by Peter Shotwell.

Some interesting quotes from the book:

"...the Civic minded Confucians, c. 500 B.C. - 200 A.D., complained that while Go looked like it might be something worthwhile to teach their children, it was really a seductive and immoral waste of time, where youngsters only learned how to gamble, play nasty Taoist tricks, and forget their parents."

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Japan:

In Japan, beginning anywhere from 500 to 700 A.D. the game as considered more of a mental martial art and it vame to be enjoyed by men, women, monks, samurai, and warlords. By about 1600 A.D., it was considered so important by the Tokugawa shoguns that they began sponsoring a professional class of players...Four the next two hundred fifty years, this honored elite was paid to do nothing but study and improve the game."

Sound familiar? It's interesting to see how intense the reaction has been to this game throughout the course of history!