A Different Kind of Chess Book "Cultures, Chess & Art, Volume 2, The Americas" by Ned Munger, 1998 Mundial Press, Hardcover, 224pp., $50.00 Regular visitors to The Chess Cafe Book Review section are used to seeing discussions of chess books that deal with the opening, middle game, endings, biographies, tournaments, etc. This week, however, we take a look at a more unusual entry into the chess publishing field. We are led on a tour through North, South and Central America; the author is our tour guide and our vehicle is the art and sculpture of chess sets reflected in the native cultures. The author, Ned Munger, is a professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, and apparently, according to the publisher's blurb, an internationally acclaimed authority on Africa. Material for this book, the second in an intended four-volume series, was gathered during his travels to every country in North, South and Central America, thirty-three Caribbean islands and research in some of the major chess set collections. The book's objective is stated in the author's preface: "The purpose of [the 'Cultures, Chess & Art' series] is to present chess sets as works of art, to explain them as expressions diverse cultures, and to foster an appreciation of the heuristic value inherent in collecting them ... Ethnicity is the focus of my collection" The objective is reached in fine fashion. The book is a large, 8 « " x 11 «" hardcover volume that is divided into five basic parts: United States & Canada, Mexico, Central America, Caribbean and South America. These are further supplemented by Notes and an Index. Each part is further subdivided into small sections that refer to and explain specific chess sets. The reference is to the illustrations. The book contains 237 color photographs, 94 black and white photographs and four keyed maps. Each illustration is described in a separate entry in the text. A brief history, discussion of the set's significance and other pertinent information are shared with the reader. So, for example, Figure 45 is dubbed "Spanish Pulpit Style" and has the following text accompanying it: "Painted Bone and Wood In Spain the church was a major patron of the arts. Thus, churches and their furnishings - including pulpits - were an important focus of Spanish artists' endeavors. The influence of Spanish Chess-set art from the eighteenth century, with carvings resembling pulpits, apparent in Mexican sets. In this bone set, some examples of which date from the nineteenth century, the King and Queen's stems have two round sections, one stacked above the other. The top section of the King's stem is thick; the Queen's is thin and graceful. The stems of all other pieces have just one thick section. All pieces are topped with human heads except for the horse's head on the Knight and the typical, finial-decorated turret on the Castle. The colorful makeup of the King and Queen closely resembles examples of this set from the last century. Crowns adorn the King and Queen's heads. The Bishop has long hair. The Pawns are simple turned pieces of brown-and-black painted wood with bone crowns. In other examples of pulpit-style sets the Pawns are elaborate, with heads sitting on draped shoulders brightly painted in reds and greens..." While the author's scholarly approach to the sets is top notch, he occasionally stumbles when he attempts to digress into chess history. For example, his treatment of Morphy (p. 30) is grossly oversimplified - there of course is much more to it than "apparently because his challenge to other players went unanswered, [Morphy] soon removed himself from the public world of chess." Other examples may be cited, but while such slips may annoy the more serious historians among us, they do not substantially impact the author's overall achievement. This book will not give you any insight into the latest variation of the Najdorf or King's Indian, and it will not be much of a resource for the personalities and events in the history of chess. If however you are intrigued by the color and diversity of chess sets and their historical development in various regions around the world, this is the book for you. A coffee-table book that you will actually read and enjoy!