As much as our lives are marked by a yearning for the fundamental desires of food, sex and shelter, game-playing is of similar significance. For it si the primary means by which we alleviate the monotony of our days, a source of entertainment that makes the burdens of work and obligation bearable. But while some games are simply mindless diversions, fantasies into which we can all-too-easily escape, others engage our minds, our instincts and our passions in ways that provide us with challenges both delightful and maddening. These are the games that endure the test of time. These are the games that occupy our smartest minds. For it is these games that speak to who we are and who we want to be. Mr. Shenk highlights perhaps the most famous of these in his wonderful biography.
Since it emerged from the sands of sixth-century Persia, chess has been one of the world's most successful obsessions. Played by everyone from politicians and poppers, generals and geniuses, its secrets have withstood the test of time, enduring in the face of millions of games across hundreds of years. On the surface, it is a relatively simple contest, a grid of eight by eight in which pieces, of six different ranks, are strategically moved in the furtherance of a single goal, to capture the opposing king at which point the opponent is required to surrender the game. And yet, despite its straightforward rules, chess has been the subject of obsessions and fashions, feuds and fascinations. It has even inspired us to a greater understanding of computational systems, clearly delineating the tasks with which the human brain is far more equipped to cope than the soulless machine. It is a game of war and manipulation, of honor and trickery. It is a game that knows no bounds, sees no social barriers, plays no favorites. It is chess.
Describing the game as having more outcomes than there are atoms in the universe, Mr. Shenk leaves no doubt, from the first page of The Immortal Game onward, that chess is a game of both myth and reality, beauty and brutality. Across some 300, well-researched pages, he illustrates the degrees to which it has inspired and crushed, uplifted and destroyed, the minds of the exceptional and the ordinary. But while he fascinates us with the history of chess and its evolution, his work's greatest strength is the extent to which it highlights chess' place in the tapestry of broader human events. For not only has it played a role in world history, being the pivot around which peoples and nations have drawn justification for their supremacy, it has shaped the thinking of the men and women who have built our world into what it is today, a reality as surprising as the game itself is durable.
While this is a wonderful, fast-paced snapshot of chess and its place in human cultures both here and gone, I would have liked to have seen more women represented here. Chess may well be a game that appeals more to that particular strain of geeky, computational thinking more present in men than women, but there are surely many women who have played over the years as well. And but for a few brief references, they are almost entirely left out of the author's history. This is, however, the only oversight in what is otherwise an excellent and enjoyable read.
As revealing of our character as it is of the game itself... (4/5 Stars)
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