Synopses & Reviews
A year with the boy geniuses of the nation?s top high school chess team, now in paperback with a new afterword Edward R. Murrow High School has long been one of New York?s public-education success stories, a school where there are no varsity sports, and the closest thing to jocks is found on the powerhouse chess team.
Award-winning sportswriter Michael Weinreb follows the members of the Murrow chess team through an entire season. Weinreb delves into the history of chess in America, following the stories of greats such as Bobby Fischer, for whom the world within the chessboard is as easy to comprehend as the world beyond it is difficult.
Review
In this thrilling, vigorously reported, deeply empathic book, Michael Weinreb . . . brings to vivid life a contemporary chess world suffused with its own updated version of nerd machismo.
The New York Times Book Review
Fascinating. . . . [Game of Kings] does for high school chess what Buzz Bissingers 1991 bestseller, Friday Night Lights, did for high school football.
USA Today
Writing with the deft, propulsive style of a young Frank Deford, Michael Weinreb has captured both the intellectual insanityand the curious normalcyof what its like to be a teenaged super-genius. [Game of Kings] is the Friday Night Lights of high school chess.
Chuck Klosterman, author of Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs and Chuck Klosterman IV
About the Author
Michael Weinreb and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, The Dallas Morning News, Newsday, and ESPN.com. In his career as a journalist, he has been named best sportswriter in Ohio by the Associated Press, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and has been cited three times in the Best American Sports Writing anthology.