(The book by Marilyn Yolum is reviewed by Emperor)
A very good book indeed. Jolly good book. I'd rate it as 10 out of 10 . The pictures are good and the book was thought over, perfect.
Some things that I have learned from the book:
Chess is beleived to have originated in India, sixteenth century. The Queen used to be called a vizier. No one wanted or thought of a female being on the chess board. It was thought a trait of wisdom to play chess. Nobles and knights usually played chess. Females used to play chess a lot more back three to ten centuries ago.
The church banned chess because people would bet on the outcome. But chess was kept alive. Eventually the church had accepted chess again, and chess was a popular game again. Chessboards were great gifts; they were usually made of ivory.
Chess has been known as a love game, so chess romance scenes were everywhere. The King and Queen were in these scenes, as the lovers. These "Scenes" were on coins, mirrors, on windows, and all through out Valentines day,they were everywhere.
Both men and women were connected to chess. Kings and Queens were also connected to themselves. When mixed sexes played, the man was often dazzeled by his female opponent, thus he would lose the game. But I don't get distracted when I play girls.
In 1831 somewhere, a laborer dug up the most intricate chess peices. They were called the "Lewis Chessman". There were 128 peiees altogether. Today there are only 93 pieces. 82 in the British museum, and 11 in the national museums in Scotland.
Buy it is my suggestion. Just go to www.Amazon.com to buy it!
Nice review! Here's some more little-known facts about chess:
ReplyDeleteAt one time the King could leap two squares on his first move, any direction, before settling down to one square at a time. Kind of like the pawn's first move, only the King doesn't have to move straight ahead. This "King's Leap" was used to get to the first castled-like position: you move the rook over next to the King, then the King "leaps" to the rook's other side on the next move. Later they shortened it up to castling in a single move as we know it today and dropped the King's Leap. By the way, castling was not invented until about 1695.
Stalemates weren't considered a draw until 1899. Before that they were sometimes considered a loss for the player delivering the stalemate, and sometimes considered a win the the player delivering the stalemate.
Chess has pretty much settled down now, but it's seen a LOT of changes through the years, and quite recently!