ALPHETA'S LITERARY AGORA
BOOK REVIEWS

The History of Chess from a Different Perspective

"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)," by David Shenk, Doubleday, 352 pages, $26 (US).

Jan Newton
October, 2006

When David Shenk told me a few years ago that he'd been doing research for a number of years in contemplation of writing a book about chess, I was very excited, and encouraged him to continue his work.  Shenk, the author of several other books (none about chess), is not a "chess insider" - he is not a "pro" chess player, he is not a chess historian, he does not write a column about chess, and he does not "hang around" with any of the foregoing.  I thought, at last - Yes! - we'll get a book written by someone with an outsider's point of view, someone objective, someone who has not been inculcated in the dogma surrounding the origins of the game as put forth by a small group of "experts" who conveniently authenticate each others' works.  David promised to send me a copy of his book, if and when it was published.  I'm happy to report that I received my copy a few days ago and I'm eager to settle into my recliner to read it.  I will do my own review.  In the meantime, our readers may find these reviews informative.

Here is a review from the New York Times (good work, David, getting a review published there!):

Long Live the King

By KATIE HAFNER

Published: September 10, 2006

For all the words written on the topic of chess - and there are entire libraries devoted to the subject - some fundamental mysteries persist: What exactly are the origins of the game? Why do so many world champions end up as lunatics? And why has chess endured well into the age of the Xbox, while thousands of other games have disappeared over the centuries?

David Shenk has no definitive answers but in his new book he explores chess as metaphor, chess as addiction, chess as a window into the workings of the human brain, even chess as a hope for humankind. He begins with the obligatory discussion of what is known about the beginnings of the game: Some 1,500 years ago in Persia, by way of India, there emerged a two-player war game called chatrang, played with a counselor where the queen now sits and elephants instead of bishops. Rather than being invented all at once "in a fit of inspiration by a single king, general, philosopher or court wizard," the game we know today was "the result of years of tinkering by a large, decentralized group, a slow achievement of collective intelligence." More recently, chess has made its way onto hundreds of Web sites, where buffs from around the world convene to play online and millions of games already played are archived and available for study.

Critics may point out that Shenk himself isn’t much of a chess player, as he readily admits. But a popular survey like this one doesn’t need a grandmaster, and Shenk, a spry writer who has also written books on Alzheimer’s disease, technology and other subjects, has a good sense of what might interest a general reader. Although the book’s subtitle promises a history of chess, its more interesting pages offer something closer to meditation, personal revelation and the exploration of what he calls "the deep history of chess’s entanglement with the human mind."

Shenk’s own curiosity about the game was piqued when he began to investigate the life of his great-great-grandfather, Samuel Rosenthal, a 19th-century Polish-born master who was particularly skilled at playing multiple games simultaneously. Inspired by this personal connection, Shenk makes a failed attempt to become a respectable player in his late 30’s. He also dives into the substantial literature on the game, which he boils down into concise chapters on subjects like chess and the Muslim Renaissance, chess and warfare, and chess and totalitarianism, not to mention chess strategy.

To give the book a narrative thread, Shenk interweaves throughout an account of one famous match, the so-called Immortal Game played in 1851 in London between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky, then two of the best players in the world. The Anderssen-Kieseritzky match started out as a throwaway practice game during a tournament, and lasted less than an hour — but it became legendary as an example of the "swashbuckling attacks" and "lack of long-term planning" that defined chess’s Romantic era. Shenk’s account, accompanied by diagrams of each move, richly illustrates what he calls the "lightning-quick reversal of fortune" that can occur in the course of a game. More disappointing is the perfunctory chapter on the humiliation of the world champion Garry Kasparov. Shenk merely skims the surface of Kasparov’s 1997 loss to Deep Blue, a computer programmed by I.B.M. scientists, which was a signal moment in the history of the game and rattled faith in the supremacy of the human mind. Oddly, he focuses instead on the anticlimactic rematch, six years later, between Kasparov and another program, Deep Junior, in which Kasparov requested a draw.

Chess afficionados will not learn much new about the game itself, and they will most likely be familiar with the Anderssen-Kieseritzky match already. They may, however, be amused by the collection of odd information scattered throughout the book: what it is that a blindfolded chess player actually sees in his mind’s eye; how the Nazis replaced the traditional pieces with modern war implements; and how the Bolsheviks embraced the game. Napoleon, though a ham-fisted player, was fascinated by chess. Benjamin Franklin wrote of the game’s beneficial effects on morality and intellect. Marcel Duchamp, obsessed with the game, virtually stopped making art altogether in order "to find the right move." Some of this might seem like mere filler between moves in the suspenseful Anderssen-Kieseritzky showdown, but in the end it adds up to a strong case for the game’s bewitching power.

After describing the stunning conclusion of the Anderssen-Kieseritzky match, Shenk shifts gears and visits a second-grade classroom in Brooklyn, where a roving chess instructor is introducing a roomful of 8-year-olds to the joys of the game. Enthusiastic pandemonium breaks out, with bishops gliding straight up and down the board, pawns wandering diagonally with no capture in mind and checks ignored. A visit to a chess club with slightly older protégés of the same instructor cements Shenk’s view that chess has a vital place in schools. With much of public education in a shambles, it is a bit quaint to think that chessboards can help. But Shenk is convincing: "We face in our modern, splintered world not only a crisis in education, but more pointedly a crisis of understanding — of thought and of willingness to engage in thought." Thinking tools like chess, Shenk argues, can "help our minds expand, grow comfortable with abstraction and learn to navigate complex systems."

Check.

Katie Hafner is a technology reporter for The New York Times.

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Here is a review from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

'Immortal Game' on board with chess through the ages

By PHIL HANRAHAN
Special to the Journal Sentinel

Posted: Sept. 8, 2006

She glued his pieces to the chessboard - that was the endgame devised by the bride of modern-art pioneer Marcel Duchamp to counter his obsessive attachment to chess and its black hole of stratagems and stylistic theory during their honeymoon in 1927.

By this time Duchamp was so far gone that neither the nuptial bed nor art-dealers, would-be buyers or a delegation of Dadaists, Cubists and Surrealists could turn his head from the chessboard. And so one night, the wifely glue came out.

So begins "The Immortal Game," David Shenk's exhilarating account of chess across the centuries and cultures and brain synapses. Cases such as Duchamp's are all too common. Anything not-chess pales to insubstantiality.

Sometimes chess simply cracks the mind, though in its defense, it often draws minds already at home with consuming abstraction and just acts as a catalyst, a push in the back, grandmasters slipping off a cliff into paranoia and isolation, a place where everything, to quote Duchamp, "takes the shape of knight or queen."

These "chess victims" get their own chapter, "Into its Vertiginous Depths." Shenk - author of acclaimed books on Alzheimer's and information-overload - takes us inside the lives and skulls of chess' shattered elite. Best known of them is America's Bobby Fischer. Not long after his 1972 victory against Cold War rival Boris Spassky, Fischer's eccentricity tilted perilously. Years of toxic rants now blacken his legacy.

But that's chess' stygian side. There's much more to the story - light, sweetness - and a fascinating history.

Originating in India around A.D. 500, chess spread via the Silk Road, got a Persian push and later surged through medieval Europe.

Never has a game taken such universal root. Why and how makes for a sweeping chronicle that ranges from Baghdad in A.D. 813 - riven by civil strife - to the tile floor of a 12th-century Italian basilica to a London parlor in 1774, where chess addict Benjamin Franklin played Lady Howe, pre-revolution diplomacy shadowing every move.

Chess has long associations with war and class hierarchy (Napoleon loved chess; medieval sermons used it to teach social station), but from the start it also acquired brighter meanings, even myths and legends, going to its humanistic quality.

Here was a game, invented in a time of blood-feud, that emphasized thinking - brain over brawn. It highlighted the dangers of rash action. It required opponents to sit down at a table, agree on rules and face off without weapons.

Chess' contemporary story can best be summed up by a single word - cognitive. The game has been at the heart of efforts by cognitive scientists and those working in artificial intelligence to better understand human mental dynamics. What is behind chess genius? Can a computer think like a human being? Can chess re-wire the brain?

There's a wonderful chapter on chess in schools. Asked what they know about the game, an 8-year-old in an inner-city New York classroom says: "It can take a whole day to move just one piece."

So far results are good. Chess instruction teaches self-discipline, circumspection, long-range planning, non-aggression. It triggers "higher-order-thinking."

Shenk weaves a masterful tale that all readers can enjoy, no matter how little they know about chess. A "Seinfeld" episode shows up (George drops a girlfriend after she beats him at chess), as does the author's great-great-grandfather, a Polish Jew who reached chess-champion heights in 19th-century Paris. And for drama, Shenk crosscuts to moments from perhaps the most exquisite match ever played, "The Immortal Game," Anderssen vs. Kieseritzky, London, 1851.

White bishop to e7. Checkmate.

Milwaukee-raised Phil Hanrahan now is a writer in Los Angeles.

From the Sept. 10, 2006 editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

 

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