Any books better than Murray's History of Chess?

Hi, does anybody know books that may be better than the classic Murray's A History of Chess? I was thinking maybe some more recently published book may have more thorough information and history since Murray's chess history is from 1913.

Batgirl would know.  You could always try to contact her if she doesn't happen to see this thread.  She's our resident chess historian.

I would not know, I have been waiting for the book to come in on loan at my local library for some months now...

I don't know if it's better, but I read and enjoyed HGM Harry Golombek's 1976 History of Chess.  I have Richard Eales' 1985 Chess The History of the Game, but haven't read it yet.  Eales was British Junior Chess Champion, and a lecturer in history at University of Kent.  I think I read David Shenk's 2011 The Immortal Game in a library, and it was enjoyable enough.  The 1992 Oxford Companion to Chess by Hooper and Whyld has short encyclopedia-style articles on a lot of historical figures.

Kasparov's My Great Predecessors series has a bunch of annotated games for the different world champions, interspersed with some history.

Great! Thanks for the suggestions!

Maybe you would like The Psychology of the Chess Player by Reuben Fine, Kings of Chess by William Winter, The World's Great Chess Games by Reuben Fine, The Great Chess Masters and Their Games by Fred Reinfeld, Grandmasters of Chess by Harold C. Schonberg, or The History of Chess in Fifty Moves by Bill Price.

I second Reuben Fine's The World's Great Chess Games.  He wrote a page or two on the career of each player, and includes some colourful anecdotes.

Former world champion Max Euwe came out with The Development of Chess Style in 1968, and British GM John Nunn updated it in 1997 to include Anand, Kramnik, Topalov et al.  Euwe also had a book, Bobby Fischer The Greatest?, comparing the champions.

The 2nd edition of Svetozar Gligoric's The World Chess Championship opens with a narrative covering the matches up until 1972 as well as all the games annotated.

Richard Reti's The Masters of the Chessboard is an old classic describing the style of Morphy, Anderssen, Alekhine et al.

Fine's Psychology of the Chess Player is perhaps the worst chess book ever written by a Grandmaster. You've been warned.

Best overall would be the Oxford Companion, while the Eales book is more modern and up to date than Murray but much shorter.  The others are good reads but neither as comprehensive nor as historically meticulous about accuracy.

Harold James Ruthven Murray's A History of Chess is the standard bearer, but you won't find anything past 1913, as you noted.  It is quite scholarly and may not be for all readers unless they are willing to invest the time to delve into the early, pre-European game known in Persia and Arabia as Shatranj.

Murray's history is one of the few thoroughly addressing mansubat, Arabic chess problems, that were sometimes used for instruction.  See this short article at Chess Maniac by Bill Wall.

H.J.R. Murray also wrote A Short History of Chess in 1917 but published in 1963.  It is only 138 pages long and not an abridgment of the original work.  If you want to cut to the chase, so to speak, this may be for you.  It can be printed on demand by Ishi Press, but I do not recommend this publisher.

Lastly, another book not mentioned in this thread is Henry A. Davidson's A Short History of Chess, published in 1949.  How it compares to the more current Chess: The History of the Game by Richard Eales I cannot say.

Although much more limited in scope, Peter J. Monté, The Classical Era of Modern Chess (2014) is probably the most thorough and scholarly work on chess ever written.

Kasparov knows nothing about sourcing. At best, his series is an overview and anthology with serious flaws. For the casual reader, however, they serve as a useful introduction. He s not in a league with Murray.

Murray sources his claims in detail and he examined such an abundance of sources that a comparable work will never appear. Monté, however, does compare, albeit on a much smaller scale. Monté also consulted with all of the leading scholars who are working on small pieces of chess history, and he fully absorbed Murray’s work. His book is better sourced and corrects some of Murray’s errors.

The Oxford English Dictionary was a mammoth undertaking that required dozens of contributors and decades of work. It killed several editors. The editor who finally brought it to completion was Murray’s father. Murray was born into a world where the first use of every English word was being meticulously tracked and the data organized. He applied these methods to his inquiry into chess.

This thread inquired about history.
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I'm not disputing the instructive value of My Great Predecessors. I have and have spent considerable time reading the set. I have exonerated its value in many threads. As a historical work, however, it falls severely short. Kasparov is a poor historian, but remains the greatest chess player who ever lived, and also is an exceptional teacher of the game.

You don't seem to comprehend the nature of history.
Unsourced material is not history.

Something that appears to be outside your knowledge base.
Here's an example (not chess related) by a college history teacher: http://historynotebook.blogspot.com/2012/08/youngs-cauldron-redux.html

You'll find nothing like this in Kasparov, who mostly offers the surname of those he quotes, but not a reference to the text quoted, to say nothing of date and place of publication and page reference. As My Great Predecessors was being released, the books were criticized for lack of sourcing. The editors added a partial bibliography to the back of volume 5 in response. Such a feeble reply does not address the criticism.

Nothing written is as thorough as Murray concerning the whole scope of chess history from the beginnings to the time in which he wrote. However, for the period from the emergence of modern chess in 1475 to the seventeenth century, there is a book more recent and more thorough than Murray. Peter J. Monte, The Classical Era of Modern Chess (2014).
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Monte is not light reading. Those who find the detail in Murray intimidating will also struggle with Monte. I read it last year and am working with it regularly as I pursue my long-term project of sourcing all the games credited to Gioachino Greco and expanding the database to fully account for his innovative study. A few snippets of my work appear in https://www.chess.com/forum/view/game-analysis/a-greco-game-that-you-have-not-seen

I listed the set as one of the ten that got me to class A. The instructive value of Kasparov's work is beyond question. At issue here, however, is its historical value.
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Consider Edward Winter's review of the first volume:
"The absence of, even, a basic bibliography is shocking in a work which claims to be ‘Garry Kasparov’s long-awaited definitive history of the World Chess Championship’, and a lackadaisical attitude to basic academic standards and historical facts pervades the book."
https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/kasparov.html

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As history, Kasparov's book falls short.

For the general reader (i.e., someone intimidated by the detailed sourcing and minutiae found in Murray and more recently Monte), Eales is probably the best choice. It is highly readable, reasonably short, and mostly accurate.

@long_quach

In multiple posts with links to other threads, you have so far failed to mention a single book. Perhaps you should consider the OP's question before spamming the thread.