The Immortal Game
A History of Chess
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
Does playing chess require a great mind, or are great minds formed by playing chess?
Chess: the seemingly simple game that contains infinity. For centuries it has served as a metaphor for society, informing military strategy and influencing mathematics, the arts and artificial intelligence. Popes, rabbis and imams have condemned it as the devil's game; Caliph Muhammad al-Amin lost his life trying to checkmate a courtier while Benjamin Franklin used chess as a cover for secret diplomacy.
Here, David Shenk chronicles its intriguing saga from ancient Persia to post-modern Europe, examining along the way a single legendary game that took place in nineteenth-century London. With its blend of cultural history and lively personal narrative, The Immortal Game is a compelling guide for novices and aficionados alike.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Those curious about chess and wishing to learn more about the game (but not too much more) will welcome this accessible, nontechnical introduction. Shenk (The Forgetting) succinctly surveys the game's history from its origins in fifth- or sixth-century Persia up to the present, touching along the way on such subjects as his own amateurish pursuit of the game, erratic geniuses like Paul Morphy and Bobby Fischer, chess in schools today, computer chess and his great-great-grandfather Samuel Rosenthal, who was an eminent player in late 19th-century Europe. To heighten the drama, Shenk intersperses the text with the moves of the so-called "immortal game," a brilliant example of "romantic" chess played between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky in London in 1851. Appendixes include transcripts of five other great games, along with Benjamin Franklin's brief essay "The Morals of Chess." Readers will come away from this entertaining book with a strong sense of why chess has remained so popular over the ages and why its study still has much to tell us about the workings of the human mind. 50 b&w illus.
