Synopsis
About David Shenk
See more books from this AuthorThe history of chess is the history of the dissemination of culture, notes Shenk, and he nimbly employs the various disciplines in history, anthropology and psychology to convey the importance and usefulness of the game over its 1,400-year span.
| Read Full Review of The Immortal Game: A History ...A look at the history of chess and its “entanglement with the human mind.”
Sep 10 2006 | Read Full Review of The Immortal Game: A History ...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, compu...
Jun 19 2006 | Read Full Review of The Immortal Game: A History ...Interspersed with the history of the game, Shenk offers a play-by-play of "The Immortal Game," a practice game played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kiesseritzky in 1851.
Nov 14 2006 | Read Full Review of The Immortal Game: A History ...But he traces the history of chess through how it is used - chess is used as a metaphor throughout history, and what it serves as a metaphor for tells us a lot about each time period.
Nov 14 2006 | Read Full Review of The Immortal Game: A History ...That is, until Napoléon's lonely exile to St. Helena, where, David Shenk surmises, ''he probably found the competition somewhat stiffer.'' Such wry observations abound in Shenk's thrilling tour of the 1,500-year-old game, including a lively exegesis of a legendary 1851 match that provides the bo...
Sep 08 2006 | Read Full Review of The Immortal Game: A History ...Phil Hanrahan NY Times Book Review 3.5 of 5 Stars "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...
Aug 21 2007 | Read Full Review of The Immortal Game: A History ...An aggregated and normalized score based on 80 user ratings from iDreamBooks & iTunes