Paul Charles Morphy – compared with famous contemporaries like Adolf Anderssen or Howard Staunton – belongs to the ‘enigmatic’ personalities of chess history. Such a fate remains mostly reserved to those great players whose biography states, sooner or later: showed psychological abnormalities, isolated himself,became moody, a weirdo, a loner ...

In short – he was one of those who nourish and thus keep alive the folklore maintaining there’s a fine line between genius andinsanity.However, it’s not the aim of this book to illuminate the more orless obscure areas of Morphy’s life, as it’s not a psychologicalstudy, but a chess book. Thus, instead of a research of the soul,a search is to be conducted, a search for a reliable answer to the question as to what sort of chess player Morphy was.

The author is a chess historian whose main interest has alwaysbeen this American ‘superstar’ of the 19th century – rightly regarded as one of the ‘uncrowned world champions’. He has selected and annotated 100 of Morphy’s most instructive games and traced his life's journey in detail – from the discovery of the child prodigy to his early death.

The result is a very vivid insight into a highly interesting part of chess  history,  which  has  certainly  not  deserved  to  fall  into oblivion."