The Immortal Game: A History of Chess

Author - David Shenk ... [Goo?] [Posters]

This Paperback Book item from Anchor was reviewed on 3-Nov-2008.

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1) Paperback Book The Immortal Game: A History of Chess by Anchor. Being an avid fan of chess, David Shenk provides an engaging book on a difficult and dry topic. Even if you barely understand the game, masterful storytelling (suspense, even) make the book difficult to put down.

Shenk takes us through the history of chess, how an obscure board game in ancient India, Persia, and Egypt was used to train nobles before it arrived in Europe for the very same purpose. There´s a fascinating bit how Muslims, Christians, and Jews have understood chess at different moments in history, how chess may have inspired Western philosophers to grant us free speech and liberty, and possibly even used chess as an occult gateway into the divine! It´s not just a game, and the alternating chapters on analyzing one of the earliest modern games of chess lets you appreciate the BEAUTY of the game.

Finally, It´s a great read on the Kindle, the pictures remarkably don´t get in the way (other chess books are awful on the Kindle, with chess diagrams frustratingly cut in half across two pages).¤

2) Paperback Book The Immortal Game: A History of Chess by Anchor. Despite the subtitle, this is less a "history of chess" than a survey of its subtitular impacts upon "art, science, and the human brain." It works better as a series of interconnected chapters on chronologically arranged topics rather than as a comprehensive study. Shenk argues that the game encouraged medieval acceptance of free will over fate, and skill over chance. He tries to trace this admittedly ambitious thesis through the spread of the game from sixth century Persia to the West and then globally.

He´s at his best with metaphors, as these illuminate the game for newcomers like me. Shenk delves into the symbolic nature of chess, and his own images assist our understanding. He uses Jenny Adams´ research from the Middle Ages in her book "Power Play," examining the formative period for the game, to emphasize how pieces could be seen as a miniaturization of society, from peasants to royals. Shenk agrees with Adams about how this conception paralled the creation of an individual self related to the community, moving about in a pattern that left nothing to caprice and all to control.

Speaking of images, Shenk deploys them well. The spread of chess was as if "the game had been shot out of Arabia like a shotgun shell, scattering similar but distinct fragments all across the Continent." (57) He compares water molecules changing from water to ice with one movement of a pawn affecting a game´s outcome. He thinks about how near-death experiences allow one to glimpse the beyond in a fashion resembling chess players who can skim "close enough to infinity" for them "to peer over the ledge and envision the fall." (70) The middlegame seems like you´re away from the beach, finally enjoying the "high, crashing, erratic ocean waves. Is that a life raft headed your way, or a saw-toothed shark?" (105) Developing one´s pieces may be as crucial as vaccinating a youngster, for while if you neglect this action, fatality "isn´t certain," one "can expect to face serious trouble."

He explains that he wrote this book after taking up chess as an adult after a brief stint as a youngster, but he still lacks the requisite ambition that, he tells us, makes a chess "genius," rather than any innate brilliance. Practice 20,000 hours at anything, Shenk reasons, and you will achieve success! "It wasn´t so much that I minded losing; I just got tired of my own mediocrity, and realized that I preferred to stay up nights trying to write a better book about chess than studying to be a better player. For whatever reason, my drive was to understand the relentless drive of others to play masterful chess." (135)

He sums it up as a combination of a battle between two forces, each socially stratified, competing to dominate a "finite piece of geography," interacting dynamically and in complex manner, as "each army manipulated by a player," with "wits rather than brawn," and using short-term tactics along with long-term strategy, "in a game that could never truly be mastered." (73) The alliance of tactics with strategy, Shenk finds, separates-- at least for now-- Kasparov from Deep Blue. Humans still, if tenously, thrive in unpredictable variations on strategy that a processing intelligence system appears not yet to have mastered.

Near the conclusion, Shenk has an epiphany in a NYC classroom as he watches a master coach a school team. Shenk wonders if teaching chess could help us respond to the blasts of consumer-driven manipulation, political chicanery, and ideological rhetoric we´re subjected to daily. Instead of retreating back to comforting beliefs, he muses, we should nourish our enlightened sense of skepticism. Chess makes us think for ourselves. We learn to deal with abstraction, navigate complexity, and expand our mental horizons.

While this narrative lacks the personal touch and the extended travelogue with its byways and idiosyncracies featured in J.C. Hallman´s engaging "The Chess Artist" (also reviewed by me recently on Amazon as is the rather too-similar later work by Paul Hoffman, "The King´s Gambit"), "The Immortal Game" succeeds by brevity. Shenk, nevertheless, may prove too rapidly paced a guide into the realms he glimpses. For a longer entry into the tournament world, you may want to try Paul Hoffman´s book, partially about his relationship with his father as analyzed through the filter of high-level competition.

Intriguingly, Shenk´s own great-great grandfather. Samuel Rosenthal, was one of the best French masters of the later 19c. I´d have wished for more about him; the hurried, two-page coda, both in the German visit and the brief encounter with his ggg-father´s portrait in a London chess pub, does not satisfy the reader finishing this work. You want to learn more about the German town, his ancestor, and his European talk that appears to have condensed his book´s thesis.

Often in this book, Shenk moves too quickly. I can see why he favors the Romantic game with its parries and attacks. Complex ideas rush past you as they intersect with chess, although such a format, usually with terse chapters, does seem suited more to a quick scan than any in-depth study of the many subjects he necessarily touches upon.

I liked the interspersion of the "The Immortal Game" between Anderssen & Kieseritzky on June 21, 1851, as this helps beginners follow the pieces, learn notation in an entertaining manner, and comprehend a bit of Romantic strategy at its best. However, the subsequent shifts of chess theory into the positional or scientific, the hypermodern, and the New Synthesis in turn earn only cursory attention. Likewise, I did not fully figure out why he includes the Kasparov vs. Deep Junior moves that he´s diagrammed, as these two moves gain only momentary attention and insufficient elaboration.

He does recapitulate the Immortal Game at the end, along with a few other legendary games, with some comments of his own. The appendices helpfully list his print and electronic sources, although a spot check revealed an endnote slightly off from its pagination; his final excerpt, from an article in Tikkun magazine, even though it inspired him to write this book, is not cited in the documentation.

Still, it´s an instructive introduction, suited for novices like me, and doubtless more advanced devotees of this 1400-year-old pursuit. There´s a need for a popular introduction such as this to explain chess to those who may not want to learn how to play so much as how to appreciate how the game´s evolved, represented, and influenced. Certainly, finishing this short and accessible overview, one will want to find out much more about chess.¤

3) Paperback Book The Immortal Game: A History of Chess by Anchor. The Immortal Game (330 pps)
by David Shenk

"Think of a virus so advanced it infects not the blood, but the thoughts. But of its human host. Liver and spleen are spared; instead this bug infiltrates the frontal lobes of the brain, domination such prime cognitive functions as problem solving, abstract reasoning, time motor skills and, most notably, agenda setting. It directs thoughts, actions, and even dreams. This virus comes to dominate not only the body, but the mind."

So begins David Shenk´s The Immortal Game. The game of course is chess. If you have never played, never wanted to and have no interest in it; then neither this review nor the volume itself will hold any interest for you. Good bye - see you next time.

However, if you are intrigued by the game, and the fact that after four moves there are 10 to the power of 120 possible moves (that is one with 120 zeros or one thousand trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion), then this slim volume will captivate you. Certainly the information about the trillion, trillion stuff, made me feel better about my own game; now I know why my computer keeps thrashing me with morbid regularity.

Shenk´s book is supported on two planks. One is the fact that his great grandfather, Samuel Rosenthal was a `legendary chess master´, and two, the friendly game between the German Adolf Anderssen and the Estonian Lionel Kieseritzky in London on June 21st 1851 known as the Immortal Game.

Samuel Rosenthal was born at Suwtki, Poland 7 September 1837, and died, almost exactly 65 years later at Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. He became a law student and moved from Warsaw to Paris during the Polish revolution in 1864. He settled in Paris as a chess professional and writer.

The actual immortal game between Anderssen and Kieseritsky, was a `warm-up´ for the London International Tournament. Anderssen won; and walked away with the tournament, clutching the equivalent of half a million dollars in today´s money. The tournament was propitious for Anderssen in another sense: he went on to be the leading player in the world until 1866 (save for a couple of years when he wasn´t trying).

Kieseritsky´s life by contrast, ended two years later in a Paris mental hospital: very dead and very broke. It is said that not a single person attended the interring.

Subtitling the chapters as move numbers in the Anderssen/Kieseritsky game, Shenk takes the reader on an extravaganza of chess history. From its origins in Persia in the fifth century, to an aid to education in today´s America, Shenk misses nothing. There are answers here to all our "...I always wondered about that".

Shenk´s sources and notes are comprehensive and copious, as are his appendices. However, I thought Appendix I, pointless. If a reader didn´t know the rules of chess, I doubt they would stay with Shenk for 244 pages. That said, appendix II and III are worth the purchase price of the book alone.

If you love chess, you must buy this book. If you only know the moves - but enjoy the game, you must buy it. For everyone else - you should buy it too. Who knows, there could be a Grand Master lurking within you just waiting to come out.
End
¤

4) Paperback Book The Immortal Game: A History of Chess by Anchor. For anyone that enjoys, likes, or loves the game of Chess, THIS IS A MUST READ. It provide a full history and evolution of Chess while walking you through one of the most famous games of Chess.¤

5) Paperback Book The Immortal Game: A History of Chess by Anchor. This book was excellent in detailing the development of the ancient game of chess. It begins with ancient Persian roots as a Islamic game which traveled throughout the known world influencing kings and countries. The book is more than a history lesson, it is a lesson into the dynamic effect of chess on culture, science, and human reasoning. The history is told through interesting anecdotes. Throughout the book, the author details the moves of the "immortal game." This is one of the most famous games in history. It was a 1800´s century battle of tactics. It was the romantic style of chess perfected. The book details the four historic periods of chess and the style of play in each. Also, the book quickly highlights some of the movement changing players throughout history. This book was an excellent read for those who love this "game of kings."¤

6) Paperback Book The Immortal Game: A History of Chess by Anchor. Chess is the most enduring and universal game in history. Here, bestselling author David Shenk chronicles its intriguing saga, from ancient Persia to medieval Europe to the dens of Benjamin Franklin and Norman Schwarzkopf. Along the way, he examines a single legendary game that took place in London in 1851 between two masters of the time, and relays his own attempts to become as skilled as his Polish ancestor Samuel Rosenthal, a nineteenth-century champion. With its blend of cultural history and Shenk’s personal interest, The Immortal Game is a compelling guide for novices and aficionados alike.¤

Page Updated: Robert N. Goolsby, 1-Dec-2008, 14000340869781400034086, 6X0-091-861-791-131-FGB-8

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