The Immortal Game

A History of Chess

by David Shenk

Paperback, 352 pages

English language

Published Oct. 2, 2007 by Anchor.

ISBN:: 978-1-4000-3408-6

(6 reviews)

Why has one game, alone among the thousands of games invented and played throughout human history, not only survived but thrived within every culture it has touched? What is it about its thirty-two figurative pieces, moving about its sixty-four black and white squares according to very simple rules, that has captivated people for nearly 1,500 years? Why has it driven some of its greatest players into paranoia and madness, and yet is hailed as a remarkably powerful intellectual tool?Nearly everyone has played chess at some point in their lives. Its rules and pieces have served as a metaphor for society, influencing military strategy, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and literature and the arts. It has been condemned as the devil's game by popes, rabbis, and imams, and lauded as a guide to proper living by other popes, rabbis, and imams. Marcel Duchamp was so absorbed in the game that he ignored his wife on their honeymoon. Caliph Muhammad al-Amin lost his throne (and his head) trying to checkmate a courtier. Ben Franklin used the game as a cover for secret diplomacy.In his wide-ranging and ever-fascinating examination of chess, David Shenk gleefully unearths the hidden history of a game that seems so simple yet contains infinity. From its invention somewhere in India around 500 A.D., to its enthusiastic adoption by the Persians and its spread by Islamic warriors, to its remarkable use as a moral guide in the Middle Ages and its political utility in the Enlightenment, to its crucial importance in the birth of cognitive science and its key role in the aesthetic of modernism in twentieth-century art, to its twenty-first-century importance in the development of artificial intelligence and use as a teaching tool in inner-city America, chess has been a remarkably omnipresent factor in the development of civilization.From the Hardcover edition.

4 editions

Kaslov reviewed The immortal game by David Shenk

Review of 'The immortal game' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This book's title the "The Immortal Game" comes from one of the most famous games ever played dubbed, well... The Immortal Game, played between two chess champions Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky in 1851 in a cafe during a break of the first international chess tournament.

The author used this particular game to go through some of the history of chess, but mostly through the lens of various chess playing styles over the years, from the romantic era all the way to the modern computer and online era and festooned throughout with plenty of anecdotes about chess the game, chess as symbol (good and bad) and chess players and all of the insanity that only people can bring to the table.

In covering nearly 1500 years of history I am surprised he didn't go much into the mechanical evolution of the game from the original Indian Chaturanga to the relatively …

Bean reviewed The immortal game by David Shenk

Review of 'The immortal game' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

An interesting survey of the history of chess, how it passed from culture to culture throughout the ages, and how it has continually been used as a tool for control, rebellion, and advancing intelligence (real and artificial).

The story is intertwined with a heavily annotated telling of "the Immortal Game". I honestly found myself looking forward more to the discussion of the game than the history of chess, but it still moved along at a good clip.