Rating: 
Summary: a coloring book???
Review: Absolutely fabulous, a must for any Star Wars fan. The information is totally accurate, well-written and well-organized. The only thing is, I was tempted to give it four stars rather than five, because the pictures are horrendous. The picture of Yoda on the cover makes him look evil, and the depictions of Leia barely look like her at all. But, if you ignore the pictures, this book is great!
Rating: 
Summary: Must Have For Any Star Wars Fan
Review: Absolutely fabulous, a must for any Star Wars fan. The information is totally accurate, well-written and well-organized. The only thing is, I was tempted to give it four stars rather than five, because the pictures are horrendous. The picture of Yoda on the cover makes him look evil, and the depictions of Leia barely look like her at all. But, if you ignore the pictures, this book is great!
Rating:
Summary: The absolute best Essential Guide!!!!!
Review: I am a die hard Star Wars fan, my room is like a shrine to it. I got the Chronology for Christmas a few years ago, and it's my favorite out of all of the essential guides. It goes into detail about the pre-Republic days, Xim the Despot, and The Hyperspace and Sith Wars. It also goes beyond the fall of the Empire, and the beginning of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion. I really loved the early Republic days and how it nearly fell to the collaboration of Exar Kun and the fallen Jedi, Ulic-Qel Droma. My favorite section of the whole guide is the Rise of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Thrawn was the only alien Grand Admiral, (Chiss was his species) and the last to nearly topple the New Republic. There is a lot more in the Guide, but you will just have to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: the Essential Guide to KJA books.
Review: I felt as though this was not much more than a guide to KJA's SW books. I have never really been impressed with Mr Anderson's work, but I bought the book because I thought it would help me out with the stuff I haven't read. It was EXTREMELY vague on the X-Wing comics. It didn't devote much time to the Thrawn Trilogy. And TPM didn't even warrant the twenty pages KJA spent on is Jedi comics. He spent more time on his books than he did on the movies combined. Yes, there are more KJA books than there are movies, but the movies are the backbone of the SW universe. All in all, with his concentrating mostly on his work, and just skimming over the rest of the SW universe and EU, he produced an close-to-adequete(?) guide book.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than I expected...
Review: I got this book in order to understand more deeply some references in the NJO books about other events that occoured before, and it happened that I thought this book would be better for that than the Essential Guide for Characters (which is now out of date I think). This book was better than I expected, I takes you right by hand to the begining of the NJO, and it not only comprehends the novels and the latest comics, but also the Marvel comics, as well as the Video Games, as there are many references for the Phantom TIE of Rebel Assault II, the poisoned Grain from Ghorin in X-Wing, the Dark Troopers of Dark Forces, the Valley of the Jedi of Jedi Knight, the ancient Sith temple of Mysteries of the sith... it's all there, written in very comprehensive way. The only low point was that there are some illustrations that are not that good. 4 and a half stars of my rating would've been fine.
Rating:
Summary: A must have
Review: I just bought this book and already it's great. It helps plot out the events that have taken place in the Star Wars universe. As well it gives brief descriptions on eventful and important events. It is a great reference book if you are not sure when an event has taken place. It is full of information that is essential if you are going to have any comprehension of the great universe that George Lucas created. Not to mention that map of the Star Wars galaxy is very useful.
Rating:
Summary: A brief but thorough chronology
Review: I was always curious about how had everything started and how did it continue. Well, I had two options:
1) browse through the entire comments written about SW books
or
2) get a chronology This chronology is well written and updated (2001) and leaves the necessary gap for the upcoming next two movies (Episodes 2 & 3). After reading it I've decided to buy 4 books related to some parts of the history I was interested (what happened between the first 3 movies) I strongly reccommend it
Rating:
Summary: This really is an 'Essential'book for Star Wars Fans.
Review: I was really anticipating the release of the Essential Chronology, as I was looking forward to an official effort to define the flow of the often cumbersome Star Wars Universe. I was not disapointed. This book fits all the puzzle pieces together, from KJA's Sith comic books to Episode 1 to Shadows of the Empire and beyond. One of the really helpful aspects to me, is it 'finishes' a lot of stories. The authors were allowed to fill in the gaps, and so we now know what happend AFTER The Truce at Bakura, and just where those awful young adult novels involving Tricolus fit in. As other people have mentioned, the book is very brief in its descriptions, and really leaves out a lot of detail that would be nice to have. This is not to say that the authors skipped massive parts of the expanded universe, just that there are small bits missing. As one reviewer noted, little to nothing of the Rogue Squadron comics were included, while Kevin J Andersons own Tales of the Jedi have entire chapters devoted to them. More than making up for these gripes is the effort put into getting as much major information in as possible. For example, readers of the now defunct Star Wars Adventure Journal may remember the Pentastar Alignment, but how did it form, and what happend to it? Now we have the answers. Also corrected are the discrepencies between the Sith as presented in the Tales of the Jedi, and in Episode 1, and the explination is very interesting, as it also ties in elements from the game Dark Forces II Jedi Knight.While the text can get a bit oppresive if you try to read it through, it works great as a refrence, just look up the period you want to know more about. All in all, I have to say this is a great book, all that is keeping it from the full four stars is the lack of details in some parts, and the attempt to include the young adult books at all, they should have been dropped along with the Ewok movies. Other than that, I would reccomend the purchase of the book, it is quite worth. 4/5.
Rating:
Summary: The title says it all: The SW Essential Chronology
Review: If you're a SW fan of any form (casual to hardcore), you'll enjoy having this book in your collection. It's filled with a huge amount of info on the SW universe, as well as before and after events of the 1st movie. The artist's conception of each event is ok (I would have preferred drawings from Ralph McQuarrie, but I guess this book would cost more than it does, right?), and they help to provide a snapshot image of the event, but overall, you're going to want to get this book for the sheer info on the SW universe. If George Lucas was to ever try and find a way to showcase all of this info onto the big screen, his SW movies would total 20 episodes.
Rating:
Summary: a good source of history in star wars world
Review: not a bad book gave alot of information and on some exploits from some of main characters but i would had hoped for a little more detail of some of the stories like they didnt give much information about clones wars or how did palpatine was able to make his new roder with the rising form of the empire or how did skywalker learn about darkside and become his transformation to darth vador. I figure most is based on from the movies but even the authors with the excess to what they have and what they can learn from lucas himself i am sure they could had put a little information on some of these events.
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