Product Description

A surprising, charming, and ever-fascinating history of the seemingly simple game that has had a profound effect on societies the world over.

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 educational tool?

Nearly everyone has played chess at some point in their lives. Its rules and pieces have served as a metaphor for society including military strategy, mathematics, artificial intelligence, 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 different popes, rabbis, and imams.

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 new aesthetic of modernism in 20th century art, to its 21st century importance to 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.

Indeed as Shenk shows, some neuroscientists believe that playing chess may actually alter the structure of the brain, that it may for individuals be what it has been for civilization: a virus that makes us smarter.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #330569 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-05
• Released on: 2006-09-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From 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. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
You don't have to be Garry Kasparov--or even a chess player--to find David Shenk's history of chess fascinating. While he does include a play-by-play on one famous match, his book isn't a dry account of moving pieces around a board. Instead, it looks at aspects such as chess's role in military tactics (and Napoleon's final days), diplomacy, and artificial intelligence. Rick Adamson brings Shenk's enthusiasm for chess to listeners' ears, making games, people, and events come alive. Adamson delivers the anecdotes in Shenk's lively conversational style, letting listeners in on Shenk's passion for the 64-square game. You won't be a grandmaster when you're done, but you'll understand the obsession that fuels champions. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Versatile author Shenk has conceived a bright idea for marching through the history of chess. His title a double entendre, Shenk alternates narrative passages on the ancient lineage of chess with move-by-move analysis of a spectacular 1851 contest that lore has dubbed "the immortal game." Shenk is also an Everyman-guide, and his attitude is one that many readers will share--he is attracted to the game's infinite possibilities but also intimidated by its difficult body of analytic knowledge. Trying to master chess has deranged more than a few, such as artist Marcel Duchamp and former champion Bobby Fischer, but it has also given great pleasure to others, such as Benjamin Franklin. Seeking a reason for the popularity of chess from its Persian and Indian origins 1,500 years ago to the present, Shenk decides it lies in chess' fluidity as metaphor. It was plainly conceived as a war game, but feudal European society found deeper meanings within it, as cognitive psychologists and logicians do today. Rangy, anecdotal, and nontechnical, Shenk's is popular chess history at its most readable. Gilbert Taylor
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