A Cheap Vacation, or, Not Much Chess, but a Good Book Taylor Kingston Cultures, Chess, & Art, Volume 3: Pacific Islands and Asia, by Ned Munger, 2000 Mundial Press, 8.5" by 11" hardcover, 208 pp., $50.00. While most people involved with chess are interested primarily in playing the game, there is a minority with a strong interest in collecting sets. In fact, there is an organization devoted to that esoteric sideline, as I learned from this book. The author, Ned Munger, is an eminent social scientist: a professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, a prominent geographer, a Fulbright Scholar, and former president of the Louis Leakey Foundation, to name only a few of his achievements and honors. He is also a member of the board of Chess Collectors International, a frequent contributor to their journals such as the CCI-USA News, and a world traveler. This volume is the third in a series of four; volume 1 (1996) dealt with sub-Saharan Africa, volume 2 (1998) with the Americas (see the archives for a review), and volume 4 will cover Russia, the Middle East, North Africa and India. Wherever Munger has gone (and that seems to include nearly every country in the world), he tries to find locally made chess sets, representative of the indigenous cultures, or finding none, he commissions them from local artisans. He has collected hundreds of such sets, of which 89 are described and depicted in this volume. For all that, though, this volume really has about as much to do with chess as a seafood cookbook does with marine biology. Its only connection to the game is that it involves artifacts nominally considered "chess sets." Many qualify only in the sense that they consist of 32 figures, divisible by various criteria into two sides and six types. Most would never be used for actual play, and in the case of this volume many come from cultures where western chess, or chess of any sort, is played little if at all. I'm not even sure the author himself is much of a chessplayer. USCF lists no Munger in California with even a class F rating. He consistently calls rooks "castles," and uses "major pieces" to mean everything but pawns, indicating unfamiliarity with standard chess terms. He is not much concerned with artifacts related to chess history as it is understood by, say, H. J. R. Murray, Edward Winter or Hanon Russell. He seems interested in chess only insofar as it provides a form for ethnic crafts. For much of the book the sets are not even the main subject; rather the search for them provides a premise for a travelogue, describing the geography, history, anthropology, sociology, economics, politics, arts and crafts of the places they come from, along with the author's personal experiences and reminiscences. The same purpose might be served by collecting almost any form of handicraft or artistic/religious expression: pottery, baskets, tools, garments, weapons, toys, ornaments, idols, masks, etc., with the resultant work published by National Geographic. However, this does not mean at all that it is a bad book, quite the contrary. It is a very handsomely produced, large volume, a fine "coffee table book." It is well written in an intelligent, engaging style by an articulate, observant man of impressive erudition and broad experience. Its major assertions are supported in scholarly fashion by ample footnotes. If almost none of it is about chess, that does not make it dull. In fact it's full of interesting, educational, often colorful and fascinating information about exotic locales, as these sample quotes show: "...on Komodo, it would be unwise to camp on the beach, as a Swiss tourist did a few years ago. He met an unfortunate end as a tasty snack for a hungry Komodo dragon." "Of all the islands in Polynesia, Mangaia underwent perhaps the greatest change in its topographic features as a result of human activity. The island was divided radially to give each chief a portion of land that stretched from the volcanic slopes to the rich swamps, used to grow taro, and down to the unproductive karst belt that encircles the land at the water's edge." "Rapa, southernmost of the Austral Islands in French Polynesia, is also volcanic, with peaks more than two thousand feet high ... Because of blackbirding (capturing and transporting black or Polynesian men as slaves), Rapa was populated at one time almost entirely by women ...". "Koto is a collector of Fijian artifacts such as clubs and cannibal forks. He explained: 'In the olden days the chiefs would use one fork to eat meat from the head of a human being and a different fork for meat from the body.'" "At the end of the eighteenth century, when European colonization of New Zealand began in earnest, the Polynesian inhabitants adopted the name 'Maori' to distinguish themselves from the outsiders (Pakeha). The word Maori means 'ordinary,' 'normal,' 'usual.'" "The barefoot preacher as Bishop reminds me of the old saw: When the Europeans came to Hawaii they had the Bible, and the indigenous people had the land; two hundred years later the possessions had been exchanged." "William Dampier (1652-1715) was an English explorer, navigator, sea captain ... A crew member on one of his voyages was Alexander Selkirk, later immortalized by Daniel Defoe as the title character in Robinson Crusoe." "In the spring of 1980 a Melanesian group on Espiritu Santo, encouraged by some French, seized the major city of Luganville using bows and arrows, and proclaimed a republic. Jimmy Stevens, the rebel leader in this so-called Coconut War, had about two thousand supporters." "Port Moresby, capital of [Papua New Guinea], is the most violent town I've ever visited. Threatening attackers, called 'rascals,' roam the streets. When I was there in 1990, my dinner host ... sent me back to my hotel with two armed guards, rifles at the ready." "My father coined the phrase 'metallic soldiers' for Douglas and himself because, as he said, they had silver in their hair, gold in their teeth, and lead in their ass." "In 1974, in a chance discovery at a large burial site near the ancient [Chinese] capital of Xian, more than ten thousand clay soldiers were unearthed ... buried for more than two thousand years ... If you visit the huge underground tomb ... you will be staggered by the work and wealth involved. The terra cotta figures are extraordinarily lifelike at close range ... The eyes are sculpted so that you sense the eyeballs pressing against the flaps of the eyelids; the ears have distinct upper cartilage and lobes." "Why were we delayed and forced to change course? We had seen fishing boats leaving Kunashir harbor, their decks filled with used Japanese cars. Captain Hanneman surmised that a Russian Mafia ring was engaged in a major smuggling activity with nearby Hokkaido and that the Mafia's wishes carried more weight than orders from the Border Guard or KGB." The above samples show the highly interesting variety of the book's content, as well as its almost complete irrelevance to chess. There are a few scattered references to ancient chess history, e.g. "For almost one hundred years chess scholars have proclaimed that the game originated in India ... In his recent book [The Genealogy of Chess (Premier, 1997)], David H. Li has vigorously asserted a different theory: that chess originated in China. In reviewing the book, Peter Banaschak put forth a tendentious rebuttal." Readers of the "rec.games.chess" online newsgroups may have seen occasional postings on this controversy, which continues unabated. However, Munger spends only about half a page on this topic, reaching no conclusion, except to call some of Li's ideas "more political than academic." Other segments discuss whether chess came to various lands before or after European contact, but are similarly brief and inconclusive. Moving on to the chess sets themselves, 89 of them are shown on 48 glossy pages of color photographs. Only pieces are shown, no boards. Brief narratives tell about the artists, the materials used, what the sets symbolize, anecdotes about how the author obtained them, that sort of thing. 27 sets come from various Pacific islands ranging from Hawaii to Australia, 8 from Japan, 3 from Korea, 13 from China and Taiwan, 5 from the Philippines, 13 from various islands of the Indonesian archipelago, 16 from various parts of Indochina, 2 from Tibet, and one each from Bhutan and Tannu- Tuva. Few are suitable for actual play, but many are notable for their beauty, craftsmanship, or for the stories they tell. Several reflect colonial conflicts between indigenous peoples and European invaders. One of the least practical but most interesting is a set from Atiu, a tiny Pacific island. Instead of "white" vs. "black," the pieces, dolls made of stuffed fabric, represent the Atiu people yesterday and today, before and after "civilization." Another set, from Vanuatu island, is made of sandalwood and gives off a pleasant fragrance. Other unusual materials used for sets include whalebone, staghorn, leather, and black coral. Among the most graceful is a carved wood set from Fiji. At first sight the pieces appear to be pure abstract forms, like Brancusi sculptures, but they are actually based on traditional Fijian war club designs. The sets from mainland Asia and Japan tend to be more ornate and representational: pagodas, elephants, horses, soldiers, kings in full regalia and the like. An exception is a Chinese set of "haunting spirits," eerie-looking cylindrical forms carved from bamboo. By Western standards some of the sets are grotesque, and a few perhaps shocking. For example a Balinese set features men with prominent erections, and pawns that are, well, just the erections themselves. The author comments dryly, "[The] artist may have been influenced by the primitive Irianese art, replete with phallic figures, that is currently prevalent in Indonesia ... [or by] Tantric Hinduism. Then again, it may simply have been created to appeal to tourists." The appeal of this book will not be to serious chessplayers who spend all their discretionary funds on opening manuals, instructive books, game collections and such. Nor is it aimed at chess history buffs. Other than card-carrying members of the CCI and other collectors of ethnic crafts, this volume of Cultures, Chess & Art is really for those who, chessplayers or not, would enjoy a vicarious tour of the exotic lands of Asia and the South Seas. It is also an enjoyable way to learn about tropical islands and remote, mysterious countries you may not even know existed. Considered as a cheap vacation and/or education rather than an expensive book, it's not a bad deal.