King's Gambit: A Son, A Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman

Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Hyperion; Annotated edition edition (September 11, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1401300979
ISBN-13: 978-1401300975
Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 9.2 inches

We've had a week of the "King's Gambit: A Son, A Father and the World's Most Dangerous Game" here on Chess Tales.

When the book came through, I arranged for our contributor Martin Seeber to take a look and share his thoughts:

"We’re going to write a review said Roger, a review about a book from America. A book about chess from the land of Bobby Fischer. America.

When you read it you’ll realise that its not like other books.

Since I was a child I have loved to listen to stories and tell them too. Well Paul Hoffman you’re a great storyteller and a clever biographer. And the story, well its chess and that’s our favourite. Like a set of beautiful short tales, all interwoven together, Kasparov storming out in defeat, Karpov trying to deny his losses, genius and madness, coaches and pupils, almost undercover in Moscow, simultaneous exhibitions, epic battles between the two Ks. It’s a wonderful game so good you want to keep it all for yourself and to quite honest Mr Hoffman’s done such a brilliant job that a few more millions will join the global chess community.

I felt very touched by his references to his own game development, only one player can be world champion but many of us take part and many of us dream of being better than we are. I am sure Paul is being modest for if he played like he writes he would be cheered out of the chess hall.

Sharing your life and intimate thoughts with others is the key to any art and Paul has let us in to his personal world. My father is 82 and still has a big role in my life but I’d find it difficult to tell thousands of people about our thoughts. Paul Hoffman’s book is filled with courage and insight.

The game of chess is as modern as the latest computer and as ancient as civilization. Play it with friends, inside, outside , as a sport, pull up your chair on a winter’s night, sit on your dad’s knee, show your granddaughter the moves, imagine it all the young and the old, handicapped who play without disability, and there in the great chess libraries around the world there’s a book to inspire us all and on its cover we can read the name Paul Hoffman. Okay Paul I’m taking the King bishop’s pawn and of course without hesitation the book." Martin Seeber

Source:

Chess Tales by Roger Coathup: A collection of online articles about chess and chess players.

Amazon Reviews:

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Hoffman's masterful, exhaustive tale of chess, its soaring triumphs and crushing discontents is filled with enough international intrigue and warped, shady characters to pass for the latest James Bond sequel. Along with the stereotypical lunatic Russian grandmasters (the normally even-keeled Russian asked that his chair be X-rayed and dismantled to make sure [Bobby] Fischer hadn't implanted a harmful radiation emitter inside it), chess-crazed Bulgarians, Canadians, Libyans and the occasional American plow through the contemporary chess world in search of victory. In clear, thoughtful prose, Hoffman (The Man Who Loved Only Numbers) describes the players—([Short] doesn't glare at his adversary, slam down the rooks, twist the knights into the board, rock back and forth, tap his feet or pace the tournament hall snorting like a feral animal) and the game ( On the seventeenth move, Vaganian made an impressive rook sacrifice to break up the advanced pawns in front of Joel's king and launch an attack). Hoffman's only misstep is to set the whole enterprise up as his own father-and-son conflict, a sticky memoir structure that detracts from the built-in appeal of the larger story. Otherwise, Hoffman has achieved something singular; a winning, book about the royal game that will satisfy the general reader, kibitzer and grandmaster alike. (Sept.)

Review

"If you enjoy playing chess, this will be the most fascinating, best-written book that you have ever read. If you have no interest in chess, then get ready to enjoy a fascinating, fast-moving story with unforgettable characters many of whom just happen to be chess players." -- Jared Diamond

From the Publisher

As a child, Paul Hoffman lost himself in chess. The award-winning author of the international bestseller The Man Who Loved Only Numbers played to escape the dissolution of his parents’ marriage, happily passing weekends with his brilliant bohemian father in New York’s Greenwich Village, the epicenter of American chess. But he soon learned that such single-minded focus came at a steep price, as the pressure of competition drove him to the edge of madness.

As an adolescent, Hoffman loved the artistic purity of the game -- and the euphoria he felt after a hard-fought victory -- but he was disturbed by the ugly brutality and deceptive impulses that tournament chess invariably brought out in his opponents and in himself. Plagued by strange dreams in which attractive women moved like knights and sinister men like bishops, he finally gave up the game entirely in college, for the next twenty-five years.

In King’s Gambit, Hoffman interweaves gripping tales from the history of the game and revealing portraits of contemporary chess geniuses into the emotionally charged story of his own recent attempt to get back into tournament chess as an adult -- this time without losing his mind or his humanity. All the while, he grapples with the bizarre, confusing legacy of his own father, who haunts Hoffman’s game and life.

In this insider’s look at the obsessive subculture of championship chess, the critically acclaimed author applies the techniques that garnered his earlier work such lavish praise -- the novelistic storytelling and the keen insights -- to his own life and the eccentric, often mysterious lives of the chess pros he knew and has come to know. Intimate, surprising, and often humorous, it’s both Hoffman’s most personal work and his most compelling.

About the Author

Paul Hoffman was president of Encyclopedia Britannica and editor-in-chief of Discover. and is the author of The Man Who Loved Only Numbers and The Wings of Madness. He is the winner of the first National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, and his work has appeared in the New Yorker, Time, and Atlantic Monthly. He lives in Woodstock, NY.