Elista Diaries

ELISTA DIARIES: Karpov-Kamsky, Karpov-Anand, Anand – Mexico City 2007 World Chess Championship Matches
Authors: Anatoly Karpov and Ron Henley
Ishi Press International (2007)
414 pages
$29.95

Reviewed by John Donaldson

Shortly after the 1996 World Championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Gata Kamsky, a book appeared on the event by Karpov and one of his seconds, GM Ron Henley. ELISTA DIARIES received good reviews for its insider's account of the match and well-annotated games -- some reviewers even putting it on their World Championship matchbook’s short list alongside such classics as Tal-Botvinnik 1960 (by Tal) and Yasser Seirawan's works on the 1990 Kasparov-Karpov and 1992 Fischer-Spassky matches.

Now Karpov and Henley have produced a greatly expanded (almost 25 percent more material) edition of their classic and the timing couldn't be better with Gata Kamsky's recent triumph in the World Cup at Khanty-Mansiysk. Besides the 1996 match, this book includes short biographies and representative games of all the World Champions, annotations to the Karpov-Anand match and Anand's victory in Mexico City (the key moment's for Vishy).

The new edition of ELISTA DIARIES is well bound. which is a good thing as this is a thick book. The page layout is clean and there are plenty of diagrams. The price of $29.95, the same as the first edition, is good value considering the large amount of high quality material. My only reservation is that some of the photos, which appear throughout the book, are not as clear as they might be but this is a minor quibble.

Highly Recommended

Click to buy (or get more information about) TAL-BOTVINNIK 1960 [CD, 220 pages, $22.50]