Grandmasters of Chess by Harold Schonberg; 1st ed. Lippincott 1973; revised WW Norton & Co. 1981.
Grandmasters of Chess by Harold Schonberg is a rotten book that consists of yellow jounalism based upon the writer’s ignorance and incredible stupidity. Mr. Schonberg does not understand chess, chess masters, chess history, or anything else of what he writes. The book HAS NO HISTORICAL VALUE and is 90% fiction. It proves nothing except that the author has an extremely horrid personality, in addition to being an inept writer.
From the backflap of Harold C. Schonberg’s Grandmasters of Chess: “HAROLD C. SCHONBERG, who was the senior music critic for the New York Times from 1960-1980, was named Cultural Correspondent on his retirement. He won the Pulitizer Prize for Distinguished Criticism in 1971 and is the author of eight books…
In the summer of 1972, he covered the Spassky-Fischer chess match for the New York TImes, contributing daily dispatches from Reykjavik…â€
From the back cover: “This charming history of modern chess will not be surpassed in our time… Mr. Schonberg has given us a playful, musical, haunting account of huge, often irresponsible, unsociable animals who have devoted their lives to thinking that is pure as snow.â€
–Kurt Vonnegut