Editorial Reviews:
This right-to-the-point book by one of the game's foremost teacher-writing teams uses a breakthrough approach to teach chess fast! Studies tout the many benefits of chess for all ages. Want to learn chess or teach it to your child but are busy with lots of other activities as well? This innovative book is designed for you. You choose the level you want to achieve. Want to go from absolute beginner to neighborhood champ? Complete Level I in an afternoon, play some practice games—and you'll quickly be saying "checkmate"! When you're ready to become a tough tournament competitor, Level II cuts through the mysteries of strategy and tactics to show you just what you need to know. And if you decide that you won't settle for anything less than being an expert, near the top levels of tournament chess, Level III delivers all the essential knowledge! 700+ black-and-white illustrations

Editorial Reviews:
Chess pieces and their boards are a thing of beauty that serious players often like to display around their home. The 15 one-of-a-kind designs in this book are sure to become conversation pieces, like the Berlin, with its vertical board that mounts to the wall. Other patterns in the book are inspired by the beautiful cities of Paris, San Francisco, and Venice. From classical to modern these chess sets will be cherished for years to come for their heirloom quality and high level of craftsmanship. The author's use of exotic woods, and interesting designs are sure to inspire woodworkers, chess players and scroll saw enthusiasts alike.

Editorial Reviews:
Written as story—featuring seven-year-old twins Alice and Sam and their quest to stop an impending alien invasion—Chess for Kids will teach your child how to play chess in thirty short, fun lessons. Chess for Kids describes each piece, simply
and clearly explaining what moves each one can make and how best to utilize them on the board. Here are the concepts of check, checkmate, and stalemate and basic chess strategy and thinking skills. Peppered with quizzes and puzzles to reinforce what your child has learned, Chess for Kids is the perfect book for any child who wishes to learn this ancient and always popular game.

Editorial Reviews:
These remarkable chess sets span civilizations, chronicling the game and its design beginning with the earliest known pieces and coming up to the surprising present. Considering chess through the perspectives of art and history, the engaging text touches upon the influences of local cultures and available materials, as well as the battles, rulers, and political factions that often inspired thematic sets. In addition to classic sets produced by Wedgwood, Meissen, and Murano, Chess Masterpieces includes the first ever comparison of two sets created by Fabergé (only one of which was previously known to exist), and extensive examples of 20th- and 21st-century sets crafted by artists such as Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, and Damien Hirst.

Editorial Reviews:
When we play the ancient and noble game of chess, we grapple with ideas about honesty, deceitfulness, bravery, fear, aggression, beauty, and creativity, which echo (or allow us to depart from) the attitudes we take in our daily lives. Chess is an activity in which we deploy almost all our available cognitive resources; therefore, it makes an ideal laboratory for investigation into the workings of the mind. Indeed, research into artificial intelligence (AI) has used chess as a model for intelligent behavior since the 1950s. In Chess Metaphors, Diego Rasskin-Gutman explores fundamental questions about memory, thought, emotion, consciousness, and other cognitive processes through the game of chess, using the moves of thirty-two pieces over sixty-four squares to map the structural and functional organization of the brain.
Rasskin-Gutman focuses on the cognitive task of problem solving, exploring it from the perspectives of both biology and AI. He examines concept after concept, move after move, delving into the varied mental mechanisms and the cognitive processes underlying the actions of playing chess. Bringing the game of chess into a larger framework, he analyzes its collateral influences that spread along the frontiers of games, art, and science. Finally, he investigates AI's effort to program a computer that could beat a flesh-and-blood grandmaster (and win a world chess championship) and how the results fall short when compared to the truly creative nature of the human mind.

Editorial Reviews:
Chess, the ancient strategy game, meets the latest, cutting-edge philosophy in this unique book. When 12 philosophers weigh in on one of the world's oldest and most beloved pastimes, the results are often surprising. Philosophical concepts as varied as phenomenology and determinism share the page with a treatise on hip-hop chess tactics and the question of whether Garry Kasparov is, in fact, a cyborg. Putting forth a remarkable array of different views on chess from philosophers with varied chess-proficiency, Philosophy Looks at Chess is an engaging read for chess adherents and the philosophically inclined alike.

Editorial Reviews:
Marcel Duchamp was both an artist and a chess player, but until now, little was known of his chess activities. In analyzing Duchamp's games--seeing how he reacted in specific situations during play--we can better understand how his mind worked, and gain insight into the strategies that motivated his work as an artist. Duchamp saw a correlation between art and chess, and actively sought opportunities to combine the two seemingly unrelated disciplines. Not only did he love the game, but he was aware of the reputation of chess as an intensely cerebral pursuit, and to the end of his life, he remained committed to challenging the French adage "d'etre bete comme un peintre" ("to be stupid like a painter"), raising his art to equivalently complex, intellectual heights. Naumann shows us just how deeply intertwined the two activities were for Duchamp.