Another scholarly, beautifully researched piece of work (in magazine format) by Donaldson that will only be interesting to a select group of fanatics. This book starts with a scintillating discussion of the difference between the Julian calendar and the Gregorian calendar. It then treats us to 619 (mostly) meaningless games played by Alekhine against hundreds of weak players out to have a good time.

While I enjoy giving a good simultaneous as much as the next guy, I have little interest in reading about the boring details (and I absolutely LOVE reading about chess in all its guises). If his lectures were recreated, then that would be news. If tales of his "after game habits" were given, that would also be worth preserving (it would show us more about Alekhine the man). But one 25 (wins), 2 (losses) and 3 (draws) result after another begins to get redundant as we go from page to page to page...

Allow me to quote a bit of the introduction's first paragraph:

"A year ago IM Nikolay Minev came to me with an interesting proposal: Why not do a short booklet on Alexander Alekhine's non-tournament games? The idea seemed a good one. No book had ever been done on the subject and with 1992 his centenary..."

John, no book has ever been written on left-handed chess players, the favorite foods of Botvinnik, or hairstyles of the grandmasters. One should not write a book just because it hasn't been done!

One can only pray that Donaldson's considerable talents as a chess historian and a chess author (and I consider him to be one of the very finest) will be put to better use in the future.

YOU CAN FIND THIS BOOK AT