A chess match seems as solitary an endeavor as there is in sports: two minds, on their own, in fierce opposition. In contrast, Gary Alan Fine argues that chess is a social duet: two players in silent dialogue who always take each other into account in their play. Surrounding that one-on-one contest is a community life that can be nearly as dramatic and intense as the across-the-board confrontation. Fine has spent years immersed in the communities of amateur and professional chess players, and with Players and Pawns he takes readers deep inside them, revealing a complex, brilliant, feisty world of commitment and conflict. Within their community, chess players find both support and challenges, all amid a shared interest in and love of the long-standing traditions of the game, traditions that help chess players build a communal identity. 
Full of idiosyncratic characters and dramatic gameplay, Players and Pawns is a celebration of the fascinating world of serious chess.

In Players, Teams, and Stadium Ghosts, sportswriter Bob Hunter has assembled a Hall of Fame collection of his best writing from the Columbus Dispatch. Fans will encounter some of the biggest names in sports and relive great moments from games played by amateurs and pros. They’ll encounter forgotten players and teams that struggled.

Hunter shows us LeBron James when he was a 15-year-old high school freshman, already capturing the world’s attention; 20-year-old Derek Jeter’s meteoric rise through the minors, including the Columbus Clippers; a strange encounter with Pete Rose hustling frozen pizzas; and the excitement of watching future WNBA star Katie Smith dominate a Columbus Quest championship game. The common thread is the personal touch that Hunter consistently uses to take readers beyond the final scores and the dazzle of lights. These are the people behind the athletes. They’re remembered for how they played, but Hunter reminds us who they were.

Las Vegas was largely shaped by a handful of colorful and astute casino operators who turned a dusty desert town into the gaudy, booming holiday mecca that it is today. The essays in this book introduce us to these players. We discover how early leaders like Cliff Jones, Moe Dalitz, and Benny Binion first grasped Las Vegas’s potential as a center for high-stakes gambling, and we read of mobster Bugsy Siegel’s efforts to bring to reality another man’s dream of a glamorous resort-casino on a then-remote site at the edge of town. Other visionaries like Jay Sarno, Sam Boyd, and Jackie Gaughan helped turn casinos into the islands of fantasy, replete with lavish entertainment spectacles. The arrival of eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes introduced a new style of corporate management --one carried on by Kirk Kerkorian and Steve Wynn to an industry previously led by independent entrepreneurs and their families. In preparing their essays, the authors consulted a wide range of sources and conducted interviews with many of the surviving players and their families and associates. The result is an engaging, highly informative account of a city’s growth through the visions, energies, and decisions of some remarkable gambler-businessmen.