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The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science and the Huma
by David Shenk
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Synopses & Reviews Why has one game, alone among the thousands of games invented and played throughout human history, not only survived but thrived within every culture it has touched? What is it about its thirty-two figurative pieces, moving about its sixty-four black and white squares according to very simple rules, that has captivated people for nearly 1,500 years? Why has it driven some of its greatest players into paranoia and madness, and yet is hailed as a remarkably powerful intellectual tool?
Nearly everyone has played chess at some point in their lives. Its rules and pieces have served as a metaphor for society, influencing military strategy, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and literature and the arts. It has been condemned as the devil's game by popes, rabbis, and imams, and lauded as a guide to proper living by other popes, rabbis, and imams. Marcel Duchamp was so absorbed in the game that he ignored his wife on their honeymoon. Caliph Muhammad al-Amin lost his throne (and his head) trying to checkmate a courtier. Ben Franklin used the game as a cover for secret diplomacy.
In his wide-ranging and ever-fascinating examination of chess, David Shenk gleefully unearths the hidden history of a game that seems so simple yet contains infinity. From its invention somewhere in India around 500 A.D., to its enthusiastic adoption by the Persians and its spread by Islamic warriors, to its remarkable use as a moral guide in the Middle Ages and its political utility in the Enlightenment, to its crucial importance in the birth of cognitive science and its key role in the aesthetic of modernism in twentieth-century art, to its twenty-first-century importance in the development of artificial intelligence and use as a teaching tool in inner-city America, chess has been a remarkably omnipresent factor in the development of civilization. Review: "Chess may or may not be the most intellectual of all games, but it is certainly the most romantic. Say the word 'chess,' and the images start to flicker through our minds: black-cowled Death hunched over a chessboard with the crusader in Ingmar Bergman's 'The Seventh Seal'; Alice adventuring through the Looking Glass; the thin-lipped grandmaster Kronsteen planning the destruction of James Bond in ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) 'From Russia with Love.' Some lucky readers will remember Beth Harmon, the abused young girl who discovers her lonely destiny in Walter Tevis' superb novel 'The Queen's Gambit'; others will recall the darker fate of Luzhin in Nabokov's 'The Defense.' Then there's the legendary Paul Morphy — the Edgar Allan Poe of chess — who dazzled the world in his early 20s before sinking down into delusion and paranoia. More recently, 1997 headlines announced the defeat of a human world champion, Garry Kasparov, by the implacable machine-intelligence of the computer known as Deep Blue. David Shenk recognizes all this romance, though 'The Immortal Game' tends to emphasize chess' actual history and development. For most of us, Shenk's book possesses an almost inestimable advantage over the many other publications about chess: It isn't entirely made up of page after page of little chessboards, decorated with knights, pawns and bishops in seemingly random patterns, followed by arcane notations such as 'N-QB3!!' In fact, you can be an utter novice, just a simple wood-pusher, and enjoy the author's engaging prose, honest self-deprecation (he's a lousy player) and the charm of his personal connection with the game: Shenk's great-great-grandfather was Samuel Rosenthal, once the champion of France. Shenk, who has also written on health and aging, relates the history of chess from its origins in India and Persia to the development of the modern super-computers that now regularly surpass the skill of grand masters. In between, he traces the game in Arab culture and its refinement during the Middle Ages in Europe, discusses such influential figures as Benjamin Franklin (probably colonial America's strongest player) and Franklin's French contemporary Francois-Andre Danican Philidor, who first recognized the power of massed pawns. Shenk tells lots of good stories and anecdotes. Napoleon and Marx both adored chess without being very good at it; Marcel Duchamp gave up art ('Nude Descending a Staircase') to spend all his time thinking about openings and gambits; the Viennese expert Rudolf Spielmann (the perfect name!) famously advised that one should aim to 'play the opening like a book, the middle game like a magician, and the endgame like a machine.' My own favorite story involves the British champion Harry Golombek — later a chess columnist for the New York Times — and Alan Turing, the pioneer visionary of artificial intelligence. Both men worked as code-breakers during World War II at Bletchley Park. To unwind from their cryptographic labors, the two would sometimes sit down to a game. 'Golombek's chess superiority over Turing,' writes Shenk, 'was such that he could overwhelm Turing in a chess game, force Turing's resignation, and then turn the board around to play Turing's pieces against his own original pieces — and win.' In the more thematic chapters of 'The Immortal Game,' Shenk considers the connections between chess and schizophrenia, discusses the insights into cognitive psychology derived from studying blindfolded players (they don't so much 'picture' the exact positions of the pieces as visualize fields of force around the board), and explains why Russia dominates international competitions. Shenk also lays out the four major schools in chess history: the Romantic (razzle-dazzle surprise tactics), the Scientific (patient positional play), Hypermodernism (rejection of traditional theories, e.g., a refusal to 'overburden' the center of the board with pawns) and the New Dynamism (more organic play, going with the flow). Shenk recognizes that all talk and no play can make for a dull book, so he periodically interrupts his historical chapters to analyze, move by move, what was supposed to be just a casual pick-up game. Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky happened to be in London for a 16-player championship tournament and sat down to relax a little at Simpson's Grand Divan Tavern, hardly knowing they were going to make history. That afternoon, on June 21, 1851, the two played out what has come to be known as 'the Immortal Game.' In this astonishing encounter, Anderssen, playing white, eventually gives up his two rooks to gain positional advantage and, in a breathtaking moment of sheer genius, deliberately, shockingly sacrifices his queen to clear the way to an unforgettable checkmate. Sheer genius, did I say? Most people tend to believe that superior skill at chess is simply innate, a genetic mutation. Not so, says Shenk, in what may be his most surprising chapter. In truth, chess — like so many other fields — rewards study, discipline, passion. The more you practice, the better you get. Early mentoring leads to early success, which leads to feelings of pride, which encourages even greater effort, which results in further success. Shenk relates an impressive story about 'mentored genius.' In the late 1960s a Hungarian psychologist named Laszlo Polgar embarked on an experiment 'to prove that any healthy baby can be nurtured into a genius: he publicly declared that he would do this with his own children, who were not yet born.' He and his wife later home-schooled their three daughters in, among other subjects, chess: 'From a very early age, the three Polgar daughters, Zsusza, Zsofia, and Judit, studied chess for an average of eight to ten hours every day — perhaps a total of some 20,000 hours from age eight to eighteen. ... They all became `chess' geniuses. In 1991, at age twenty-one, Zsuzsa ... became the first woman in history to earn a grandmaster title through qualifying tournaments. The second child, Zsofia, also became a world-class player. Judit, the youngest, became at age fifteen the youngest grandmaster in history (a record previously held by Bobby Fischer), and was considered a strong candidate to eventually become world chess champion.' Shenk's dust jacket adds, beneath the title and subtitle, a cumbrous but accurate precis of this fine book's overall theme: 'How 32 carved pieces on a board illuminated our understanding of war, art, science, and the human brain.' In fact, 'The Immortal Game' does all this with easy-going savvy and without making altogether inflated claims for chess. If you're new to what has been called the 64-square madhouse, you'll certainly learn a lot about its history from Shenk. But — despite an appendix reprinting a handful of memorable games — he's not going to teach you the intricacies of the King's Gambit Declined or the Nimzo-Indian Defense. Of course, most of us are pretty content just to checkmate our children and friends occasionally or, at the least, not be trounced by them with such ignominious regularity. Michael Dirda's e-mail address is mdirda(at)gmail.com. He conducts a weekly book discussion on Wednesdays at 2 p.m. Eastern at washingtonpost.com." Reviewed by Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Review: "Before reading David Shenk's wonderful new book, I had at best a casual interest in chess. It seemed too ancient to untangle, too complex to decipher with any real appreciation. But Shenk, in a book filled with daring moves and cunning patience, has made a believer out of me." Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomics Review: "I loved this book. Full of burning enthusiasm for the greatest intellectual game in the world, it shows just what can happen when an accomplished author, full of fire and passion, tackles a most wonderful and intricate story. Like a great chess game, this is an achievement that will be talked about for many years to come." Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman Review: "It's audacious enough to write a book about the world's most written-about game. To say something fresh and smart seems almost unfair. But that's just what David Shenk has done. With the depth and insight of a grandmaster, The Immortal Game explores and explains not only the addictive power of chess but its shockingly important, Zelig-like role in the history of humankind." Stefan Fatsis, author of Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players Review: "David Shenk takes us millennia back and light-years ahead. The Immortal Game is an insightful look at chess, the icons of culture it has inspired, and the surprising part the game plays in the narrative of the modern world." Bruce Pandolfini, legendary chess instructor, author of Pandolfini's Ultimate Guide to Chess Review: "[A] compelling, accessible study....[T]his proves an enriching guide for lay readers who'd like to be chess aficionados but don't know where to start." Kirkus Reviews About the Author David Shenk is a national-bestselling author of four previous books, including The Forgetting and Data Smog, and a contributor to National Geographic, Gourmet, Harper's, the New Yorker, NPR, and PBS. The Forgetting was hailed by John Bayley as "the definitive work on Alzheimer's," and subsequently inspired an Emmy Award-winning PBS film of the same name. Shenk frequently lectures on issues of health, aging, and technology, and has advised the President's Council on Bioethics. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9780385510103
- Subtitle:
- A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science and the Huma
- Author:
- Shenk, David
- Publisher:
- Doubleday Books
- Subject:
- History
- Subject:
- Chess
- Subject:
- World - General
- Subject:
- Chess - General
- Copyright:
- 2006
- Publication Date:
- September 2006
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 327
- Dimensions:
- 9.58x6.24x1.10 in. 1.36 lbs.
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