100 Books Like The Art of the Checkmate

The legendary 18th-century chess champion Andre Danican Philidor called pawns “the soul of chess”. The Dutch master Hans Kmoch was the first to catalog all the nimble and fascinating tricks the humble pawn can do, and how the lowliest chess piece can work together with its neighbors to build a “structure” around which chess positions develop. Unlike computers, we humans need concepts to help us learn, and the ideas around pawn play I learned from this book have stuck with me for decades, helping me understand the correct strategy and tactics for different chess positions. 

Once you have some practice playing chess, studying endgames is one of the most important roads to improvement. Endgames are situations where many trades have already occurred, leaving few chessmen remaining on the board. In these positions the remaining pieces have a lot more room to roam, and since they have only a few teammates around them we can see more clearly how they operate, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. Famed New York coach Bruce Pandolfini, portrayed in the most famous chess film, Searching for Bobby Fischer, takes a subject mystifying to many and distills the essence of the most important endgames, with easy-to-understand diagrams and explanations. I was already a strong endgame player when I read this book, but I learned a lot and was so impressed, I’ve recommended it to students ever since.

When I’m not writing or researching chess books, history books and biographies are about all I read these days. Not until college did I realize how amazing a well-written history book could be, telling a great story about how people actually lived in different times and cultures. After 9/11 I wanted to avoid the soundbites and actually understand the history of religious conflict. In my view a great history book must have amazing research and wonderful writing, as well as being fair and balanced, and this trilogy was one of the best I’ve ever read on all counts. It still blows my mind that an author can put together a compelling, accurate, day-to-day account of events that happened 1000 years ago. You have to read it to believe it.

What is creativity, and what makes it possible? If a new idea came from nothing, would it be magic? If a new idea were generated by recombining old ones, would it really be “creative”? In this book, Margaret Boden, a distinguished philosopher of science, thinks through what creativity really is, whether it takes the form of a world-altering advance in science or a novel jazz improvisation. To help understand human creativity, the book compares it to the workings of computer programs—ones capable of generating art or music that at least appears creative. Readers who have followed more recent developments in artificial intelligence will be able to consider for themselves whether machine creativity is, or could be, a reality. The book helped me think about what it means to create an “authentic” poem.

I love intergenerational stories, and Check Mates fulfills that love with the added glory of including a chess subplot. 11-year-old Felix is constantly getting into trouble as his ADHA makes it very hard for him to focus and attend in-class. His Grandfather, who he’s never been particularly close to, is also suffering greatly following the death of his wife. The beauty and power in this story comes when the two are thrust together and the grandfather begins to teach Felix to play chess, while also sharing stories of his life during wartime. The result is a moving story filled with connection, discovering your strengths, and a fantastic immersion into the game of chess.

I bought this book from an Army PX in Germany four decades ago. I started it over lunch and ended up late for the night shift. The title would have you think it’s about swords, but it’s really about what happens when gods grow bored and play games with mortals as their chess pieces. This series, more than any other, reminded me of why I wanted to be a science fiction and fantasy writer.

It features one of my all-time favorite fantasy characters: Ben of Purkinje. Ben doesn’t want to be a hero. All he wants to do is become a minstrel and marry the girl of his dreams. Unfortunately, he can’t sing, and she doesn’t love him. It’s good that he’s also the most reliable guy you’ll ever meet.

Between 1920 and 1945, the strength of Soviet chess exploded, propelling Soviet players to the top of the chess world – a status held in a vice-like grip for many years after.

There was no more prestigious yearly event than the Soviet Championship, and its winner was of huge political importance: this player should demonstrate the superiority of the Soviet way of life to the decadent West.

Inevitably, the championships produced both amazing chess and great personal drama, and both aspects are beautifully documented by historian Sergey Voronkov in 3 volumes covering the period from 1920 to 1953, replete with photos, cartoons, and poems from the tournament reports of the era. 

This book was easy to pick up and hard to put down, and immediately, I felt that the candor of the writing was like an extension of the main character, Beth. This is a tale about an orphaned girl who is beset on all sides by terrible situations, and of course, she is deeply affected by it all. I believe that tough times make tough people, and it always delights me to read about adversity being overcome by the downtrodden.

I loved how the story didn’t gloss over the inevitable changes that life brought Beth. She rose to the challenges and blossomed into a chess master in an arena that does not usually favor the young or the female. It’s inspiring!

Genna Sosonko – a strong grandmaster in the 1970s and 1980s – knew the top players of his generation intimately and has written many brilliant portraits of these demon-riddled geniuses.

Sosonko’s portrayal of the last years of the 7th World Champion Smyslov – nicknamed “The Hand” for the peerless intuition that automatically placed pieces on the right squares – is a moving account of old age that brought tears to my eyes.

Smyslov’s later years were spent alone with his wife in a vast, rich house that, just like its occupants, inexorably decayed as – blinded by the fear that they might be cheated by housekeepers – they eschewed all help.

At the same time accusations surfaced of cheating during one of Smyslov’s greatest triumphs 50 years earlier.