"Edward R. Murrow High School has long been one of New York's public education success stories, providing a diverse Brooklyn neighborhood of immigrants and minorities with a topflight education. At this bastion of forward thinking, there are no varsity sports, and the closest thing to jocks is found on the school's powerhouse chess team.
In the Kings of New York, sports-writer Michael Weinreb follows the members of the Murrow chess team through an entire season, from tournaments at private clubs to cash games at Washington Square Park to the Supernationals in Nashville, where this eclectic bunch competes against private schoolers and suburbanites in search of its second straight national championship. Weinreb explores the peculiar genius of chess prodigies, and describes the pressures faced by these chess players who are alternately exalted and exasperated by the sixty-four squares that delineate their obsession.
Along the way, Weinreb delves into the history of chess in America, following the stories of greats such as Bobby Fischer, for whom the world within the chessboard is as easy to comprehend as the world beyond is perplexing.
With vivid detail, Weinreb brings to life the colorful characters of the Murrow team: the 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 team captain for whom chess is both a passion and a route to college admission; the Puerto Rican teen from the rough neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant who played an ingenious opening gambit named the Orangutan; and the two stars of the team, both Eastern European immigrants, whose chess ratings climb toward grandmaster status as their rivalry grows ever more heated"--Jacket.
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