It's a shame that superlatives get attached to books not that far from the ordinary, because it makes it all that more difficult to describe the extraordinary. PAL BENKO: MY LIFE, GAMES AND COMPOSITIONS is a monumental effort, a supreme achievement, a breathtaking endeavor, and the standard against which all future chess biographies will be measured. If you care about chess and good books, you will love this work.

Publisher and co-author Silman has assembled an all-star cast, and they deliver. Pal Benko was a world-class grandmaster who also excelled in a variety of other areas. His strength and passion permeate the considerable number of pages devoted to his life. Jeremy Silman is an outstanding author who obliterated the previous chess biography mold and gave us a much more compelling glimpse into all aspects of Benko's life and times. John Watson, who contributed a 130-page survey of Benko's opening contributions to theory, once again shows that he is among the top writers and researchers about opening theory in the world. Finally, Susan Polgar contributes a foreword that helps explain the qualities that made Benko a friend to so many within the chess world. It is a great beginning to a great book.

At the outset, it is difficult to write a review of a book of this magnitude. There is so much material worthy of mention, and there is no way, in a few pages to do it all justice. Suffice to say that whatever details I provide will pale in comparison to the sum of this book's parts.

The book begins, as you would expect, in the early years of Benko's life. Here he details the hardships foisted upon his home country, Hungary, by the Second World War. Benko and his family endured numerous difficult situations, and the detail of them is sobering for those of us who have not had to persevere in the face of such adversity. It's interesting that Benko learned chess at a relatively late age but developed quickly. In many respects, it is possible that the difficult financial position he faced may have motivated his chess development – if nothing else, this book makes clear that Benko had a very strong instinct for survival and a willingness to do whatever it took to keep he and his family alive and functioning.

It's no surprise that the bulk of the book deals with Benko's period as a regular on the international chess tournament circuit, and it is also one of the more interesting parts of the book. I enjoyed the fact that Benko provides many frank assessments of his contemporaries. If you've ever wanted to hear the “dirt” on some of the players you've mostly just read about, this is the book for you.

Benko has probably never gotten his due as a player. He had some fine wins, including three over Fischer. Unfortunately, his most famous game with Bobby may be from the U.S. Championship where Fischer won with a rook sacrifice on f6 and swept the tournament with an 11-0 score. In his candid style, Benko indicates here that he was not at his best for that game because he was exhausted for the game because he was up all night necking in a car with a young lady. In fact, Benko didn't get any further than kissing, and said that “the combination of no sleep and frustration led to me losing badly to Bobby.”

Benko's long and winding trek to the West, including failed tries and ultimate success, is detailed here, and it is something straight out of an action novel. For example, leading in a tournament to qualify for the zonal tournament, he had to be careful to only place second, because his reward for finishing first would have been a spot in a zonal held in a Soviet-controlled country. However, with some work, he was able to secure the necessary place and earn the coveted trip to the zonal in Ireland. But wait – it turned out that Benko also got an invitation to the World Student Championships in Iceland, and he determined that would be a better location for his defection. Ultimately, he did defect there and was granted asylum in the U.S. Benko's coded communications with family and friends at the critical moment explain a lot about the Soviet bloc world at the time.

Benko's life as a U.S. grandmaster is another interesting subject for discussion. U.S. chess at that time had few of the sorts of “big money” Swiss system events that can now be found throughout the year. As a result, Benko was often seriously short on cash, and he scraped by on exhibitions, tournament winnings, and the various kindnesses of friends. In the end, the Hungarian Sport Organization, which helped disenfranchised Hungarian athletes in the U.S. get on their feet, helped cover Benko's expenses, got him a job in a brokerage firm, and also arranged paid vacations when he needed to play internationally.

For many years, Benko played both in American Swisses (he was known as the king of the Swisses, particularly for his many wins in the U.S. Open) and international events. Many of the trials and tribulations of both kinds of events, and the players who competed with him, are found here. In particular, Benko discusses the Stockholm Interzonal and the Curacao Candidates Tournament of 1962. Both Fischer and Benko played in these tournaments, which was the path for choosing Botvinnik's challenger for the world championship. This was also one of Bobby's poorer performances, and Benko provides much keen insight.

This book would get a high rating just from the normal biographical chapters and games, but it goes much farther than the normal, and this is what sets it apart. After the “usual” 409 pages devoted to these topics, we get bonus coverage that turns this book into a literal feast of chess.

Part two consists of a series of revealing interviews, the likes of which you generally don't find in chess magazines or books. Author Silman poses plenty of tough and interesting questions to Benko and his chess contemporaries (Larry Evans and Ronald Gross). These give and take discussions provide information about Benko, other great players of the time, and the state of world chess in the Botvinnik through Fischer eras. In many respects, this was my favorite “guilty pleasure” of the book. I gained many new insights into players I had only previously known from game scores.

The book continues to stretch far beyond the ordinary with John Watson's survey of Benko's opening practice. Watson is an outstanding opening theorist and writer in his own right, and the 133 pages he devotes to Benko's opening play on both sides of the board would have made a nice book by itself. While Benko didn't consider himself a great theoretician, Watson points out a large number of his opening contributions that helped shape opening theory, even to this day. While the Benko Gambit (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5) is perhaps his greatest contribution, others, such as the Benko System in the Sozin Attack (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Nc6 6.Bc4 Qb6) are still making their mark in current grandmaster play.

The opening survey is particularly valuable because it sheds further light on Benko's play. Watson is of the opinion that Benko's failure (if you can use that word about a player with so many national and international tournament successes) to reach Super-GM status was only because of “slightly subpar” results with black. He found that Benko's winning percentage with white was well above expectations but his score with black “correspondingly disappointing.” Interestingly, however, many of Benko's more important theoretical contributions came with the black pieces.

Of course, the Benko Gambit has an important place in the book, and there is lots of interesting discussion of both its theory and Benko's use in practice. Benko devotes a 27-page chapter to it, including many famous games against prominent players. Watson also spends 16 pages analyzing it in his section.

The book closes with 90 pages devoted to Benko's compositions, including various mates, helpmates, puzzles, problems, and endgames. A selected tournament and match record, and index of names and openings round out a thoroughly thorough – and enjoyable – book.

Over the book's several years in the making, I've had several occasions to discuss it with co-author Silman via email. He promised a different sort of chess biography, and he has delivered. There is much more revealing content about Benko the person, the world he lived in, and his relationships with others than can be found in other similar works. I particularly enjoyed the discussions about the relationship between Benko and Fischer – it appears Benko was something of a father figure (or at least older brother) to Bobby, and Benko's affection for the future world champion is obvious in his writing.

I also found discussion of just how difficult it was to be a chess professional in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s illuminating. Prior to the Fischer boom, playing opportunities were fewer than at present, and even the best players either had other jobs or had something of a hand to mouth existence. There are several revealing stories that illustrate this, such as the time when, because the USCF had not provided expense money for Benko's role at an international team event, he was forced to vacate the hotel in the middle of the night to avoid being stuck with the bill. This and assorted discussions of tournament hijinx set the book apart from others.

There are also a wide variety of excellent photos, of players at and away from the board. Often coupled with Benko's frank insights into the player pictured in the photo, this adds a rounded nature to players one often only knows from their games or final standing in various tournaments.

While an outstanding work, there are a couple of areas where I found the coverage somewhat lacking. For example, Susan Polgar writes the book's introduction and expresses her appreciation for Benko's support, including his willingness to help her and her sisters for no charge. I was expecting to find some discussion of this relationship in the book, but there really is none. Second, I was also expecting to find more discussion of the relationship between Benko and his wife and children. There is a chapter where Benko discusses his fairly sudden decision to marry, and there is also discussion of his resulting travel back and forth between the United States and Hungary (his wife stayed in Hungary, which was necessary to gain government approval for the marriage). However, there is little else that discusses the challenges this no doubt created for both of them and their children. I found this a somewhat puzzling coverage gap.

Of course, these are minor quibbles with a book that provides such a wealth of content. Besides revealing much about Benko as a player and person, the book provides a broad perspective of national and international chess during this time period. Benko's assessments are frank and, at times, somewhat different from others. For example, much has been much written of late about Botvinnik's advantages in world championship matches during the time because of his standing with Soviet political leaders. In commenting on questions about the Botvinnik-Bronstein match, however, Benko doesn't believe Bronstein purposely lost. His comments about Bronstein suggest a fearful person who probably wasn't up to the pressure of playing those final eventful games against the world champion.

In a book filled with so much fascinating discussion, it is easy to lose sight of the wonderful games it contains. Benko annotates in an appealing fashion, mixing in chess history, the particulars of the specific game, some opening analysis, and plenty of analysis at key moments. The 139 games span the years 1945 to 1991 and contain victories over the likes of Fischer, Tal, Portisch, Smyslov, Averbach, Taimanov, Uhlmann, Reshevsky, Gligoric, Keres, Korchnoi, Najdorf, and Geller. Players from the United States will find many games with the likes of Bisguier, the Byrne brothers, Kavalek, and Lombardy.

Besides excellent writing, co-author Silman has produced a first rate book. It has an impressive heft, a classy dust jacket, and outstanding binding. I was amazed that in a book of over 600 pages, I could turn to, say, page 53 and have the book lie flat and stay open. The lay-out, print, and format are all first rate. About my only (again minor) complaint is that the diagrams are a bit small for my taste. Perhaps my eyes are fading with age, but I preferred the 2” by 2” diagrams and font in Kasparov's MY GREAT PREDECESSORS series to the 1.5” by 1.5” diagrams of this book.