The Kings of New York: A Year Among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Genuises Who Make Up America's Top High School Chess Team

I was relieved it wasn't filled with commentary on matches that delved into notation and analysis of lines. Just enough detail to feel like the author took the time to know what he was talking about, but didn't feel the need to show off. I liked: the kids, the presentation of the upper-echelon high school chess world, the flashes of snarkiness, and the overall approach -- a sort of warts and all, unglamorous, critical yet compassionate look at not only the kids and the game, but the infrastructure of competitive chess.

This book seemed as erratic as the 'Orangutan Opening' chess maneuver described in the book. This is a jumpy, anecdotal account of a series of personalities that built dominating, dynastic high school and middle school chess programs with underprivileged kids in New York, and a cross section of those contemporary high school stars. Murrow Public High School's history is described, with jaunts into profiles of anonymous donors, Russian GrandMasters, and conflicts with competitive programs such as Chess-In-Schools. The scrappy, loose chess team coach for Murrow, Mr. Weiss, is described in detail, as are the students--each with their own personality and how it translates into their chess games. If you want a melange of chess history in show more America, evolution of chess away from chess halls and street games toward the internet, developmental importance on teens, cultural conflict between upper class chess players vs. the poor and immigrants, all with a youthful, go-for-broke mentality (with some pictures of chess boards and moves), then this is the book for you. For me, the book had all the requisite ingredients (although I could have used more explanation of the side games the kids were playing for fun, such as Bughouse, Blitz, Stupid, etc), but somehow it didn't come together smoothly--flipping back and forth between an upper East Side matron's historical background to the family kitchen table vignette of an immigrant, to a gymnasium chess tournament was a little kaleidoscopic. show less

Just didn't do it for me. Weinreb, a sports writer, turns his attention to the quirky world of competitive chess and discovers that America's leading high school chess team comes from an underprivileged neighborhood in Brooklyn. I enjoyed reading about the importance of chess in the former Soviet Union and to the new Russian immigrants flooding New York, but Weinreb sets up too shallow a dichotomy between the "haves" and "have nots," the the members of the chess team he profiles and their competitors from more elite private high schools. In his world, all the kids who go to good high schools are rich and being rich means you have no personal adversity to overcome. I might've enjoyed the book a little more if he could've stopped show more screaming for one second that these kids were poor. show less