Books

both as white

I am looking for a good book on the kings gambit and a good book on the scotch. any recomendations?

Yelena Dembo (spelling?) put a book out on the Scotch a year or two ago that had pretty good reviews.

King's Gambit?  Chuck it!  It's unsound, and all lines are either equal or advantage Black!  There is a recent book by Quality Chess, but on the Qualitychess.com message board, even the authors were saying that the opening as a whole isn't in White's best interest.

Scotch gambit is interesting...

I believe sp correct, TF.

I will look into the scotch one

that is a highly debated topic, but my results online and otb are enough to convince me to keep playing it at the club level haha

I don't advocate playing anything merely "at the club level".  If it's not good enough to play at the master level, then it's not worth playing at all.  Instead, what you are doing is playing an unsound, tricky line that will fool low-rated players, but at the same time, you are establishing bad habits in your chess, and once you do reach the next level, you will have to start all over again because all you know at that point is garbage that will never work at the higher levels.

well it obviously is good enough to play at the master level since masters play it. I think you are making far too many assumptions.

and since the goal is to have fun with chess, not play the best move every time, i do not see a problem with it haha

Here is a link to a game in the King's Gambit by Magnus Carlsen from 2012.

http://www.chess.com/games/view?id=13247915

and here is one from Bobby Fischer

http://www.chess.com/games/view?id=121241

And here is one from Nakamura

http://www.chess.com/games/view?id=13242918

from Morozevich

http://www.chess.com/games/view?id=1023146

and from Ivanchuk

http://www.chess.com/games/view?id=13118295

From Judit Polgar

http://www.chess.com/games/view?id=431768

How much more master level do you want?

Instead of the King's Gambit why not try a 1.d4 2.Bg5 system against everything reasonable (such as 1...f5 1...d5 and 1...Nf6)?  Sure 1.d4,f5 2.Bg5,g6! will ruin your fun but 3.Nc3 leads to a perfectly playable game anyway. 

because i play e4, and want to have the option of playing 2. f4. if i choose not to play the scotch

Not recent but a good one memory recalls is The Scotch Game by Peter Wells and Gary Lane wrote a book on the Scotch:

http://www.amazon.com/Scotch-Game-Explained-Gary-Lane/dp/0713489405/ref=pd_cp_b_3

Kings Gambit?

http://www.amazon.com/Kings-Gambit-Grandmaster-Guide/dp/1906552711/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1388523314&sr=1-1&keywords=john+shaw+kings+gambit

The book by Shaw is really good best written in years.

An older book on the Gambit I really like is the one by Joe Gallagahar

http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Kings-Gambit-Batsford-Library/dp/0805026312/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1388523374&sr=1-6&keywords=kings+gambit

There are other books I have on the Gambit all the way back to the 1800's I'm a student of the game I'm constantly studying and working on Chess learning from the masters of the past.

thank you for the recomendations

There aren't 100 people in the world capable of maintaining the soundness of even the best openings against "best play."  Just as there aren't 100 people in the world capable of producing this so-called "best play" against a less than perfectly sound opening.

The ugly truth of opening theory is that openings like the King's Gambit, the BDG, the Colle, and others of similar sketchy reputation aren't just every bit as sound as the QG or Ruy below Super GM -- in many cases they're objectively superior, since the nuances that make those hallowed openings sound "against best play," are so subtle and so irrelevant to chess played by anybody below 2700 that they (the nuances) become more mythical than real.

If you're insistent upon playing only bullet-proof openings, and you're not already 2700 and still a teenager, you're wasting your time.  You're never going to reach a level where objective soundness makes any difference, and you're probably going to struggle a lot more than if you played openings better suited to lower-level players.

I couldn't agree more.

Exactly!

and of course if we take in account faster time controls there are times when the best move may in fact not be the best move

It's about time someone said it.

Silence isn't always golden.

I agree in principle but with the caveat that openings like the Colle are absolutely terrible for average players, they will lead to the same type of dull structures game after game - an abosolute guaranteed recipe for rating stagnation. On the other hand, as you say, openings like the KG, the BDG are great for players below master level, they're rich in tactical possibilities even if not objectively 100% sound.