I regret that I haven't the time to do a lengthy review of John Nunn's Understanding Chess Move by Move, which is another great book. Nunn has been devoting his writing to some specialized areas recently (puzzles, fundamental rook endings, a beginner's book), ones in which I have no competence. Now he is back with an annotated games collection consisting of 30 modern contests (90% of them after 1990) between leading but not necessarily world-class grandmasters. The "move-by-move" format, reminiscent of Chernev's famous elementary book, makes this accessible to players of almost any strength, and the excellent game introductions reinforce the book's usefulness for players from a low intermediate level (maybe 1200?) and up to, say, 2200 (not that even Grandmasters wouldn't eat up some of the advanced analysis, but most of the material is on a more elementary level). In my opinion, this is first and foremost a teaching book, as indicated by Nunn's willingness to take half of a large-sized page on numerous occasions just to explain exactly what's going on, without variations. Nunn describes the point of each move from the opening on, but doesn't talk down to the reader; and I am so taken by the clarity, simplicity, and pure instructiveness of this book (organized by themes, incidentally) that my first instinct would be to give it to every student I know!

I noticed that Randy Bauer (one of the best chess book reviewers) gave this book a "10," his top rating and one of the few he has ever given. I can understand why. To me, the games (all high quality) are particularly well chosen for their purpose. Apart from the fact that we see a variety of styles and openings, Nunn has given us games that are evenly matched in nature (a pleasant change) and that clearly demonstrate the intended themes. Nunn's prose is lively and lucid--I think that it is his very best effort in that regard. One aspect of the book that strikes me as slightly over-ambitious concerns the very long and dense analyses Nunn includes in some games (usually towards the end). He does say that sometimes the truth of what is going on can only be told by variations, which is absolutely true; but the average player doesn't really need to know the ultimate "truth" in that sense, and I think that stretching the book's reading level all the way from post-beginner to IM or GM is a bit much. Knowing Nunn's penchant for lengthy, detailed analysis, I suspect that he just couldn't quite resist!

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