365 Selected Chess Endings, One for Each Day of the Year - 2nd hand

Norman T. Whitaker was an International Master of Chess and winner of the US Open Chess Championship. He also served 18 years in Alcatraz for crimes connected with the Lindbergh Kidnapping.

Norman Tweed Whitaker (April 9, 1890 - May 20, 1975) was an American International Master of chess, a lawyer, a civil servant, and a chess author. He was convicted of several crimes, was disbarred from the practice of law, and served several terms in prison. His most infamous criminal escapade was a confidence trick involving the Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932. Whitaker was taught to play chess at the age of 14 by his father and learned more by watching Harry Nelson Pillsbury, one of the world's very best, play in 1905. Whitaker was a member of the Franklin Mercantile Chess Club in Philadelphia, the nation's second-oldest chess club, and represented Franklin in team matches. This club was named in honor of Benjamin Franklin, a Philadelphia chess enthusiast and one of the most prominent Americans of the 18th century. During Whitaker's early chess years, the Franklin club featured the strong veteran Master Walter Penn Shipley, a lawyer by profession and an experienced chess organizer and promoter. Whitaker in his teens won high-quality games in simultaneous exhibitions against World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker and future world champion Jose Raul Capablanca. Lasker was in Philadelphia to play part of his World Chess Championship 1907 match against Frank Marshall; Lasker won that match. While not of competitive significance, these achievements by Whitaker boosted his confidence and spurred his further development as a rising talent. In 1921, at Atlantic City, he placed clear second, and top American, in the Eighth American Chess Congress. This series of nine tournaments, staged at irregular intervals between 1857 and 1923, was the forerunner to the modern United States Chess Championship tournament series. Whitaker finished with 8/11, only half a point behind winner Janowski, and ahead of Marshall, both of whom he defeated head-to-head. This was arguably his peak lifetime performance.

Glenn Hartleb, a USCF Expert player, was killed in an automobile accident near Birta, Arkansas while traveling with Norman Tweed Whitaker.

What is especially remarkable about this book is that, in spite of having been co-authored by a famous International Chess Master, Norman T. Whitaker, almost nobody has ever heard of it. I have asked around among collectors of chess books and only one person, Grandmaster William Lombardy, has ever heard of or seen this book. Lombardy knew about the book the same way that I did. Whitaker had given him a copy.

It is certainly a useful book, worthy of study. The endgames come from a variety of sources. Some were played over-the-board in grandmaster tournaments. Others are compositions. Only a few were composed by Whitaker or Hartleb. The rest are by major composers such as Grigoriev and Troitzky.

One good thing is that, unlike other collections in which the problems are so difficult that nobody could ever solve them, many of these endgames can be solved by normal humans. Even I was able to solve a few of them.

Only a few are easy to solve, however. There is obviously a program to set aside a few hours every day to study one of the end games. The answers are in the back. The answers are in German algebraic notation, which is a minor incovenience that most readers will be able to get past without much difficulty. One need only remember that S stands for knight, T for rook, L for bishop and D for queen.

As to why such a useful and important work is not better known, the answer obviously lies in the fact that Hartleb was killed and Whitaker seriously injured in a car accident shortly after publication. Also, the press run must have been small. Otherwise, more would have reached the market place.

• Casa editrice Ishi Press
• Code IP84us
• Anno Reprint of the original 1960 Edition
• Pagine 336
• Isbn 0-923891-84-6