[A couple years ago I was in Pardubice (Czech Republic) and noticed that a vendor was selling a few interesting chessbooks. A little paperback book titled Complete Games of Alekhine, Volume One caught my eye and I bought it for about five dollars. To my surprise and delight, I found that I had struck gold! This book covers Alekhine's life from 1892-1921. It gives a detailed history of this great man's life, along with every game he played (both tournament and postal), score tables, rare documents and old photos.What makes this book stand out is the incredible research that went into it. All material is given in chronological order (history of a particular tournament, for example, is followed by the crosstable and every game Alekhine played in the event) and recently discovered Alekhine notebooks allow the authors to publish games that have never before seen the light of day. Of particular interest is the author's attempt to analyze stories to see if they are apocryphal, have a grain of truth, or are completely factual (the life and death game between Alekhine and Trotsky is one such case).

Recently, I noticed that Volume Two in this series was available (a third volume should be coming out soon). This book is even better than the first! Covering the years 1921-1924, we are given the same basic format as book one, but this time comments by Samisch, Reti and endless other grandmasters, along with copious annotations to many of the games, make this one of the most interesting chessbooks I have ever seen. Particularly captivating was the discussion about Alekhine's alleged suicide attempt in 1922 (he stabbed himself in the stomach). Did this really happen? The authors give all sides of this story and let you make up your own mind.

I also enjoyed the many newspaper accounts of tournaments like Vienna 1922 and New York 1924, though the constant reference to Reti (by chess writers and many of the greatest players of the day) as the most likely challenger to Capablanca's title surprised me since the legendary Czech grandmaster never enjoyed results that would justify this view.

Though these books offer a wealth of information with an energetic presentation, the very poor editing and absolutely terrible English translation drag the work down a notch from where it should (and could) be. Another complaint concerns the constant reference to Alekhine's many exhibitions. These accounts take up a lot of space and, personally, I find them rather boring. The exhibition games are low in quality and the whole subject of a man's simultaneous exploits will only prove worthwhile to a limited number of purists. Look at my review of Donaldson's books on this same subject (Alekhine in the Americas and Alekhine in Europe and Asia) for more whining and griping about the work of one of my closest friends.