DE LA BOURDONNAIS VERSUS McDONNELL, 1834
Author: Cary Utterberg
McFarland & Company, Inc.
www.mcfarlandpub.com
416 pages
$55.00 (hard cover)

Review by Jeremy Silman

There is a simple fact about chess book publishing: most books have a very short shelf life (especially opening books), and books on chess history are guaranteed money losers. I was, of course, acutely aware of this when I wrote BENKO’S LIFE, GAMES, and COMPOSITIONS. Nevertheless, chess history is a major component of the true chess experience, and just because most players nowadays ignore it doesn’t mean such books shouldn’t be written – indeed, in my opinion they must be written.

While Garry Kasparov’s GREAT PREDECESSOR series has done a lot to introduce a new generation to the wonders of past chess adventures/heroes, McFarland & Company has quietly been churning out very high quality books on a number of historical chess topics. The present book, DE LA BOURDONNAIS VERSUS McDONNELL, 1834, can easily be summed up just by printing its subtitle: The Eighty-Five Games of Their Six Chess Matches, with Excerpts from Additional Games Against Other Opponents. Whew! That was a mouthful.

The uneducated (and therefore deprived) player might ask, “Who in the hell is De la Bourdonnais? And McDonnell sounds like someone who owned a farm. And why should I look at patzer games from the early 1800s?”

Fair questions! Let’s first address the reference to “patzer games.” I’ve looked at all 85 games from this match, and all of them are fascinating battles – full of instructive moments. Many others are shockingly modern, and it’s no surprise that Morphy considered them to be the finest examples of quality chess existing at that time.

But the games are not the sole reason to buy such a book. Instead, you have to look at such a work as a time portal – a window into the past that brings to life a different culture, an alien mindset, and a romantic age where chess was something almost mystical and highly artistic (a far cry from the present, when chess is nothing more than Xs and 0s on a computer chip, and chess competition for many people is 1 minute games where hanging pieces has little importance – time and a quick interface being the factors that blur the differences between people with skill and people with fast hands and a healthy dose of delusion).

The introduction starts on page 7, and opens in this manner: “Let us spend a summer day wandering about the streets of Paris – in the year 1815.” The next 35 pages whisk us away to the demise of Napoleon, leads us through a Paris polluted with sewage, and eventually lets us rest in the legendary Café de la Regence, home to the greatest players of the day (not to mention guests like Voltaire, Rousseau, Robespierre, Ben Franklin, and Napoleon). It’s in the introduction that we learn how Bourdonnais gained his enormous chess strength, and how the match with McDonnell eventually came to pass.

This is great stuff, but juicy content doesn’t stop there. Once the games begin, the author gives us an introduction to each match (played more or less consecutively), and then goes a step further by nicely annotating each and every game.

The rest of the book is filled with the statistics of the enormous event (nobody before or since was crazy enough to play an 85 game match – ultimately, the energy spent to complete this contest effectively killed both combatants!) and various interesting appendixes (Selected de la Bourdonnais games against other opponents, Selected McDonnell games against other opponents, Opening theory, then and now, Collected Games of Deschapelles, and more Statistical data).

This is a wonderful book that deserves to be in the collection of every true chess aficionado. I highly recommend it!

If you would like to read a bit about de la Bourdonnais right now (to whet your appetite), click HERE for a jeremysilman.com chess history article.

Though this book isn’t available on the jeremysilman.com bookshop (hopefully it will be soon), you can go to www.mcfarlandpub.com and purchase it there.

For those that would like to put together a library on chess history that creates a mood, brings the past to life, and gives you a taste of what chess is supposed to be, allow me to recommend the following tomes:

SOVIET CHESS 1917-1991 by Soltis – A fascinating look at the ins and outs of Soviet Chess. Soltis gives us (over 450 pages) far more than chess, and does his best to bring those periods of time to life. By far the best book ever written on the subject.

HUMAN COMEDY OF CHESS by Ree – A series of articles by one of the world’s best chess journalists covering chess politics, Karpov, Kasparov, Donner, Reshevsky, Tal, Botvinnik, Fischer and many more. A great read!

RUSSIAN SILHOUETTES by Sosonko – Moving, poignant, and often surprising looks into the lives of various chess legends by a man that knew them personally. It’s never been done better.

THE RELIABLE PAST by Sosonko – Moving, poignant, and often surprising looks into the lives of various chess legends by a man that knew them personally. It’s never been done better.

THE TURK, CHESS AUTOMATON by Levitt – A complete history, replete with many excellent photographs, of the legendary chess playing machine that boggled the minds of the public in the 1700s and 1800s.

GARRY KASPAROV ON MY GREAT PREDECESSORS, Books 1-4 – In depth discussions of the great players that preceded him, every player should own this whole series.

THE STEINITZ PAPERS by Landsberger – The first official World Champion ruled chess in his heyday and was thought by just about everyone to be invincible. These papers and articles bring both the player and the man to life.

PAL BENKO: MY LIFE, GAMES and COMPOSITIONS by Benko and Silman – Chess, politics, the lives of various chess legends seen through Benko’s eyes, torture, sex, and over 130 deeply annotated games.

WALTER PENN SHIPLEY by Hilbert – Far more than a study of Shipley. Rather, it’s a detailed look at American chess in the 1800s and early 1900s. Hilbert, one of the very best chess historians in the world, did his usual wonderful job.

AMOS BURN, A CHESS BIOGRAPHY by Forster – A monster book (over 900 pages!) that explores the life of the one of the most boring players in history. Why recommend it? Because the information about his competitors from 1848 to 1925 is priceless. A chess epic.

RUSSIANS vs. FISCHER – KGB files showing that Fischer’s fears were often closer to truth than paranoia!

COMPLETE GAMES OF ALEKHINE, VOLUME 1, 1892-1921 by Kalendovsky & Fiala – A detailed exploration of Alekhine and his times. The English translation is quite spotty, but the material is priceless!

COMPLETE GAMES OF ALEKHINE, VOLUME II, 1921-1924 by Kalendovsky & Fiala – A detailed exploration of Alekhine and his times. The English translation is quite spotty, but the material is priceless!

CHESS BITCH : Women in the Ultimate Intellectual Sport by Jennifer Shahade – Just out! A serious look at the lives, tribulations, and celebrations of women trying to blaze a trail in the cerebral, male dominated halls of chess. Menchik, Graf, Lisa Lane, the Chinese takeover of women’s chess, the Polgars, the globetrotting younger generation who party one day in Rio and the next in Munich, and much more.