The Chess Artist by J.C. Hallman is the rare chess book that non-chess players might enjoy reading. Author Hallman, who is a USCF tournament player, writes a tale that is centered around his quest to visit Kalmykia with his friend and mentor National Master Glenn Umstead. Though the trip to visit King Kirsan is at the heart of the book, there is much more to THE CHESS ARTIST than that. Hallman touches on a wide variety of subjects from the origins of chess to the strange and sordid life of Claude Bloodgood.

Author Hallman has an uncanny ability to describe a player in a few lines. I tested his descriptions of such well-known players as Grandmasters Alexander Ivanov (“holding his hands in a lotus-style pinch and closing his eyes as though to recall a fragrance”) and Vladmir Epishin (“even with his 2667 rating, was the kind of man I felt an instinctive pity for: he was a step behind plump, his hair was disheveled, his clothes were old and unwashed, and his heavy glasses slid down his nose like wax on a candle.”) on my Mechanics Institute Chess Club colleagues and they had no trouble guessing who was being described. Hallman’s description of Emory Tate is eerily on the mark.

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