Chess Players Book

This is a book for chess Grandmasters, novices and inquiring laymen alike. It is a book for anyone who has wondered, as Martin Amis wryly asks in his contributing text, “What are they playing at?”Marcel Duchamp’s iconic quote, “All chess players are artists,” resonates throughout the volume. David Hockney likened the game’s strategic thinking to that of making art: “Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.” “Chess is war over the board,” said Bobby Fischer, Grandmaster and World Chess Champion, but here John Lennon and Yoko Ono checkmate this notion, with their all-white chess “peace” set.Chess Players: From Charlie Chaplin to Wu-Tang Clan compiles photographs of notable figures playing the beloved game of strategy over the course of 130 years. The volume strings together zany and remarkable moments in time. In one image, players are captured on board a steamship crossing the Atlantic in 1888; in another, an astronaut studies a