Jim West On Chess: Kurt Landsberger's New Book

Monday, November 12, 2007

Kurt Landsberger's New Book

In yesterday's Newark Star-Ledger, there was a feature story on Kurt Landsberger whose great-great uncle was William Steinitz.

Landsberger has written a new book Prisoners of War at Camp Trinidad, Colorado, 1943-1946: Internment, Intimidation, and Country Club Living.

His first book, published in 1993, was William Steinitz, Chess Champion: A Biography of the Bohemian Caesar.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov