The Immortal Game: A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science and the Human Brain (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: black queen, white pawn, black pawn, Black Knight, Deep Blue, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

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 The Washington Post

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 "From Russia with Love." Some lucky readers will remember Beth Harmon, the abused young girl who discovers her lonely destiny in Walter Tevis's 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's 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 François-André 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 précis 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.

Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (September 5, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385510101
• ISBN-13: 978-0385510103
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #477,574 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

421 of 429 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and Well Written History of Chess, October 1, 2006

By	Robert M. Snyder (Fort Collins, Colorado) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"The Immortal Game" gives a different and intriguing insight not only into the history of chess, but points out how chess has had an impact in the lives of even non-chess players today (i.e. terminology and analogies taken from chess). It is obvious that the author (David Shenk - an established author outside of the filed of chess) has done his homework, and shows great appreciation for the 1400 year old game. His sources are documented in his sources and notes segment as well as the use of footnotes throughout the text.
Is this a dry and boring history of chess? Absolutely not! You will find numerous interesting stories about some of the top chess players in the world, but also there is a heavy focus on famous people who play chess (who didn't gain their fame from chess). The author is quick to point out when something is a "story" or "legend" and that often a certain amount may contact some fact.
Do you need to know how to play chess to enjoy and learn from this book? No! In fact as you go through the book, basic rules are pointed out. Though not intended to be a book that teaches chess, for an absolute beginner, you will be gently introduced to the basics. There are a nice number of diagrams, pictures, maps and complete games (with light analysis to make the book of interest to the casual chess player). Great detail with diagrams for every move of the "immortal game" is given in segments throughout the book - an interesting way of going through the game - you can skip over the in between pages if you want to follow the game from start to finish with a diagram for each move (the pages with the game stand out and are easy to find). Interesting is also a look into the impact of artificial intelligence on chess and how chess is being used as a tool to teach children in school (improving match and reading ability).
If you are looking for a history book on the mechanics of the development of the game in great detail then "The History of Chess" by Murray is the classic work (from early chess to around the 18th century). If you are looking for a book with the major focus on the history and politics of top level chess players (with moderate number of well annotated games) over the last several centuries, the "The Chess Kings" by Olson, Volume One has been released. If you are non-chess player or a chess player looking for a little bit of everything on "Chess History" in a very well-rounded way that is scholarly yet not boring then "The Immortal Game" should be your first choice.

148 of 155 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Psychological, historical and culture review by novice chess player, October 6, 2006

By	Patrick D. Goonan "www.meaningful-life.us" (Pleasanton, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I liked this book because it was an excellent story written in the spirit of great fiction. It was well-organized and wove together many different threads from a variety of areas including psychology, history and culture.

The Immortal Game gives a history of chess and also presents interesting highlights of world history along the way with many insights into man's psychological constitution, proclivities, etc. It is also a cultural commentary and uses the game of chess as a metaphor. I think it's a quite clever concept for a book.

The parallels between chess as war and various military campaigns and personalities is used a lot to bring in a world history perspective. I like the way he used this theme throughout the book and he relates it back to psychological and sociological evolution in interesting ways. He also highlights the influence of the game on various world leaders throughout history.

This book is primarily geared toward novice players. This makes the book an easy read for everyone, but perhaps serious chess players would appreciate more in-depth chess specifics. There are other reviews below that place more emphasis on this dimension of the book's contents.

This thought provoking book also makes reference to some good research material on neuroplasticity, strengthening cognition, etc. The author relates some of this research to chess and speculates that chess improves memory and cognition. This is good speculation in my opinion and quite likely true. He also talks about computers and chess and references a few of the famous matches between humans and computers.

In short, this is good writing. I recommend this book highly. It is great food for thought and engages the mind in many imaginative, entertaining and informative ways. Even if you are not a chess player, you are likely to enjoy it and perhaps develop an interest in learning the game yourself.

Chess popularity didn't endure all these years for no good reason. It captivates the imagination in ways no other game ever has. There are many reasons for this which this book explores thoroughly.

I notice some people haven't been marking this review as helpful, but they haven't been leaving me a comment. If you dont' find this review helpful, maybe you can give me some suggestions on what you feel is missing, so I can update it to be more useful. My intention in writing this review was to be very concise, augment other reviews and convey the spirit of the book to the average reader.

51 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you are curious about chess,then read this great book!!, November 18, 2006

By	Timothy G. Forney (California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I really enjoyed reading this book.It is a nice introduction to chess history and the game itself.It goes move by move with diagrams ,through the Immortal Game, played by Adolf Anderssen. It teaches you algebraic chess notation,which is the language of chess.It also teaches you the ideas behind each move.This book takes you on a journey of the game of chess, through time and many cultures .It tells of the dark side of chess ,its obsession and its madness. It also tells of the light side of chess ,its creativity, and its positive influence on human beings. He writes about its influence on children and the elderly.I could not put this book down and read it in 2 days.I found one minor notation error.This would make a great gift for a friend who may want to learn chess.I highly recommend buying this book.