Brilliant Chess, Brilliant Essays, Brilliant Writer Dutch Grandmaster Hans Ree is considered by many to be the best chess writer in the world today. As noted by the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad, reviewing the original Dutch edition, "This is more than a book about chess politics or leaders in the chess world. It is above all a declaration of love for the game, with an elegant collection of odes to the greater and lesser personalities that evolve around the 64 squares. Ree personal...

The Ideal Chess Journalist During his active chess career, Hans Ree battled with almost all the great chessplayers, including eight world champions, from Max Euwe to Anatoly Karpov. My Chess is not only about them, but also about other players and writers from the past who are admired by Ree This book gives a personal view of Ree’s own world of chess, and therefore less prominent players also appear, such as a schoolmate with whom he played an endless series of matches, or the anonymous ...

The Delight and Distress of Chess The royal game has the power to make one feel elated or disconsolate. This is true whether one plays serious tournament chess or casual chess just for fun. In this collection of 34 short stories, author Alexis Levitin, travel set in hand, takes the reader on a journey across several continents – and even into space – exploring the joys of chess and its effect on the lives of those who play. As the author states in his Introduction, “...these tales represen...

From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids: an unforgettable odyssey into the mind of this legendary artist, told through the prism of cafés and haunts she has visited and worked in around the world.M Train is a journey through seventeen "stations." It begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. We then t...

"I'd never done anything crazy like this before – a pilgrimage walk. I was not a hiker, and I wasn't a Catholic. In fact, I wasn't even sure I was a Christian. On the last government census when I had to state my religion, I'd said I was a Buddhist, mainly because they've had such a hard time in Tibet and I felt they needed my statistical support.I was also not an adventure traveler. For me, adventure travel was flying coach. All this backpacking and wearing of heavy boots and flyi...

Somehow, for all my outward pretence of cold-eyed professionalism, all my insistence that writing is simply a job like any other, I've discovered to my surprise and chagrin that there's more than that going on around here, that I write as much out of karmic necessity and some inescapable inner need to rededicate my own skills constantly to my—what? My craft? My art? My profession? I wrote these stories because the only way of earning a living I have ever had has been by writing, but mainly...

An odyssey through the mind and memory of a washed-up writer, from one of Europe's most provocative novelists, Nobel Prize winner Peter HandkeMysteriously summoned to a houseboat on the Morava River, a few friends, associates, and collaborators of an old writer listen as he tells a story that will last until dawn: the tale of the once well-known writer's recent odyssey across Europe. As his story unfolds, it visits places that represent stages of the narrator's and...

A stunning collection of poems that John Updike wrote during the last seven years of his life and put together only weeks before he died for this, his final book.The opening sequence, “Endpoint,”is made up of a series of connected poems written on the occasions of his recent birthdays and culminates in his confrontation with his final illness. He looks back on the boy that he was, on the family, the small town, the people, and the circumstances that fed his love of...

International award–winning stories of life and love in the midst of planetary declineIn Planet Earth, Nicholas Ruddock moves nimbly through a range of styles—from conventional to flash-fiction to his unique mastery of the long sentence—in stories exploring themes of love and passion, all with an awareness of our species-specific carelessness burning up the world.This collection showcases a gifted writer at the top of his game, each story fresh and...

Cousineau’s wanderlust has driven him to visit nearly 100 countries as a backpacker, documentary filmmaker, travel writer, photographer, and art and literary tour leader. For him, travel gives us what his mentor Joseph Campbell called “the key to the realm of the muses.” As author of the best-selling travel book The Art of Pilgrimage, Cousineau continues to crisscross the world as a travel writer, filmmaker, and host of Global Spirit. The Book of Roads: Travel Stories from Michigan to Marr...

AWOL: absent without leave; absent from one’s post or duty without official permission but without intending to desert.Originally a military term, it gradually entered the vernacular for when someone goes missing unexpectedly. Jennifer Barclay and Amy Logan thought it fit well with the kind of travel pieces they wanted to publish--irreverent but thoughtful, emotionally honest and opinionated, bold and provocative.For those who dream of having no fi...

Stories often find their origins in unexpected ways," Strantzas reveals. "I was inspired in this case by a photograph of a Zen garden I once used as my computer's desktop background. After staring at it day-in and day-out while I worked, I began to wonder about that dark circle of rocks and just what its true purpose might be. "There was something there in the coldness of the photograph, something that brought to mind the barren vistas of the Canadian Arctic, which ended up being the perfe...