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

Editorial Reviews:

An award-winning sportswriter takes you inside a year with the nationโ€�s top high school chess team.

With strict admission standards and a progressive curriculum, Brooklynโ€�s Edward R. Murrow High School has long been one of New Yorkโ€�s public-education success stories, serving a diverse neighborhood of immigrants and minorities and ranking among the nationโ€�s best high schools. At Murrow, there are no sports teams, and the closest thing to jocks are found on the schoolโ€�s powerhouse chess team, which annually competes for the national championship.

In The Kings of New York sportswriter Michael Weinreb follows the members of the Murrow chess team through an entire season, from cash games in Washington Square Park to city and state tournaments to the SuperNationals in Nashville, where this eclectic bunch competes against private schoolers and suburbanites. Along the way, Weinreb brings to life a number of colorful characters: the Yale-educated calculus teacher (and former semipro hockey player) who guides the savants while struggling to find funding for his team; an aspiring rapper and tournament hustler who plays with cutthroat instinct; the teamโ€�s lone girl, a shy Ukrainian immigrant; the Puerto Rican teen from the rough neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant who plays an ingenious opening gambit named the Orangutan; and the Lithuanian immigrant and team star whose chess rating is climbing toward grandmaster status.

In the bestselling tradition of such books as Word Freak and Friday Night Lights, The Kings of New York is a riveting look inside the world of competitive chess and an inspiring profile of young genius.

Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating: Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5Average rating of 3/5
Summary: A collection of articles.
Comment: This book is easy to read. Unfortunately it reads more like a collection of articles than a narrative. I’d have loved a bit more depth on some members of the team. Also it seems near the end that he hadn’t given enough time before writing the epilogue. I’d love to know what happens to these kids 4 or 5 years later, not just the following year.

Another problem I had, was that many of the chess moves noted in the book were left with no illustration or very little description, while others, like the Orangutan were given the entire history of where the name comes from (an odd bit of chess lore in itself). Also as with any book about Chess, Bobby Fischer was discussed. In this case it just seemed like filler. It wasn’t related to the story and just served to show how “normal” these kids are in comparison.

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