Thursday 22 May 2014

Best books of the 20th Century

Over at the Quality Chess Blog, GM's Jacob Aagaard and John Shaw have listed what they consider the 10 best chess books of the 20th century. The list itself is a nice collection, although it does seem weighted towards "Best Games of X" by X, with half the list being books of this kind. There are a couple of obvious choices (My System, Zurich 53 by Bronstein) and one underrated classic (Question of Modern Chess Theory by Lipnitsky).
If it were my list I would rate My System a lot higher than 9th, and would try and find a place for "The Middle Game" by Euwe and Kramer. But to be honest, I probably wouldn't produce a "best of" list at all. Instead I would look at things like Most Enjoyable Book (The Fireside Book of Chess), Most Amusing (Tactics in the Ending), Most Interesting (Complete Chess Addict) or even the Most Esoteric Opening Book (Knight on the Left). Of course this is all just opinion, and I'm sure there are both alternative choices, and alternative categories.

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