Samuel Reshevsky

During the last decade, almost all the top players of the past have been reborn in their own compendium of games. Soltis wrote an excellent book on Marshall that is filled with biographical material, 220 games, and stories (also by McFarland & Company, Inc.), Warren Goldman wrote a highly detailed tome (replete with games, photos, biographical material and just about everything else you could think of) on Carl Schlechter (Published by Caissa Editions), the Linder brothers wrote a very enjoyable book on Emanuel Lasker, and Kurt Landsberger wrote a heavy-duty biography on William Steinitz (once again, we have McFarland & Company, Inc. to thank). This time the legendary American Champion Samuel Reshevsky comes to life in a book subtitled: A Compendium of 1768 Games with Diagrams, Crosstables, Some Annotations, and Indexes.

I, for one, am quite happy that this book was written. Reshevsky has been largely ignored by chess biographers and this book fills a rather large void. Though this large book mainly consists of crosstables to all his tournaments and virtually every game (often unannotated) the great man played, some biographical material is presented at the start of every new decade.

My favorite parts of the book focus around the annotated games. In the Kashdan-Reshevsky match, almost all the games are annotated by either Reshevsky, Kashdan or Alekhine. Other games are also given notes, but far too few to make me completely satisfied.

Overall, Samuel Reshevsky will be a solid addition to any chess library. Hopefully, the ultimate book on Reshevsky, which will contain much more biographical material and more annotations to his games, will be written sometime in the future.