bookReviews96

Two New Books by McFarland

McFarland & Company, Inc. (http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/) is known for producing high quality books devoted to various aspects of chess history and its two most recent efforts continue the tradition.

Great Chess Books ( 2005, 199 pages, paperback, $30) by Alex Dunne is a personal look at what the author judges the top 100 chess books to appear in English in the past century. The criteria for selection on this list is spelled out by Dunne in the introduction and includes the book's longevity, critical acclaim, influence, historical importance, authorship and reputation. The books appear chronologically ranging from Devides book on Steinitz published in 1901 to Kramnik: My Life and Games in 2000. Dunne describes each book and why it earned a place on the list. In some cases there are photos of the book or dust jacket and the recent selling price on E-Bay.

Such a book is bound to court controversy in much the way that trying to decide who is the best shortstop or middleweight fighter of all time will start an argument. Many of Dunne's selections like the Oxford Companion to Chess, Chess Personalia, Chess Fundamentals, My System or more recently The Road to Chess Improvement or Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy are going to be on most people's lists, but others might raise an eyebrow. Does Horton's Dictionary of Modern Chess merit inclusion just because it was the first chess dictionary in English? I note that Dunne says it goes for $2 on E-Bay. One might think that Betts pioneering work Chess: An Annotated Bibliography of Works Published in the English Language 1850-1968 or Chess: An Annotated Bibliography by Andy Lusis, the two standard works for chess book collectors, might have made the list, but such arguments go with writing this type of book. Likewise this book seems to be weighted to North America over England in the selection of material. Opening books, which account for well over half of all chess books published, are not represented proportionally here. Many of these type of books probably deserve to be forgotten not long after they first appear but I would have thought Flank Openings by Raymond Keene deserved a better fate as well as the excellent book he and George Botterill did on the Pirc Defense for Batsford in the early 1970s.

I very much liked the photos of dust jackets from some of the older books. You don't see this much anymore but some of the one's from the past were works of art. Unfortunately now days the trend is paperbacks.

One word of advice is don't take the E-Bay prices literally. Use them as a starting point. Whether it is ABE books or E-Bay be sure to do some research before forking over your cash. Past catalogues from dealers like Dale Brandreth and Fred Wilson can often be quite useful in judging a fair price.

The name of Jeremy Gaige is not as well known to American chess players as it should be. This is a shame because as Bill James is identified as the premier baseball statistician, so Gaige is America's, and probably the world's, best and most diligent chess archivist.

Before Gaige, writing chess history was more an art than a science. It was not uncommon to have well written and interesting pieces of chess history filled with mistakes. Gaige has done much to correct this situation with numerous books devoted to tournament crosstables and his masterwork, Chess Personalia. This revolutionary work, which was originally published by McFarland in a hardback edition, has long been out of print. It might surprise you to learn that this 527 page book does not have a single game in it, nor nary a photo. What it does have is the names, birth and death dates, and a list of obituaries for thousands of chess players. And Gaige didn't guess at this information. He hunted it down by pouring through old newspapers, magazines, and corresponding with many, many individuals. The result is a work that is truly useful for anybody interested in chess history and journalism.

McFarland's new edition of this book is a handsomely produced paperback that retails for $45. Note that this edition is an exact reprint of the earlier work. I have a copy of Gaige's 1994 privately circulated update in a binder and am not sure why the additional information wasn't incorporated into this volume. That said, if you have any question about any player from 1987 or before, Chess Personalia is the place to look first. Jeremy Gaige deserves to be in the USCF Hall of Fame..