Гижицки Е. С шахматами через века и страны / Пер. с польского; предисл. Д. Бронштейна. — 4-е изд.
Варшава: Спорт и туризм (Sport i Turystyka), 1964. — 358 с., цв. и ч/б ил.
Твёрдый издательский цельнотканевый переплёт (с блинтовым и золотым тиснением шахматного коня и заглавия на верхней крышке и корешке), цветная иллюстрированная суперобложка, оригинальный картонный футляр, мелованная бумага, энциклопедический (увеличенный) формат.
Состояние книги отличное: блок плотный, чистый, переплёт крепкий, тиснение сохранно; на переднем форзаце дарственная надпись на грузинском языке от 30/V/65. Суперобложка в очень хорошем состоянии: незначительная потёртость по краям и сгибам, без утрат. Футляр сохранён, со следами бытования по углам и рёбрам.
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Gizycki J. Chess Through the Ages and Countries / Translated from Polish; foreword by D. Bronstein. — 4th edition.
Warsaw: Sport i Turystyka, 1964. — 358 pp., color and b/w illustrations.
Publisher's full cloth hardcover binding (with blind- and gilt-stamped chess knight and title on upper board and spine), pictorial color dust jacket, original cardboard slipcase, coated paper, encyclopedic (oversize) format.
Book condition very good: text block tight and clean, binding firm, stamping intact; presentation inscription in Georgian script on the front free endpaper, dated 30/V/65, in blue ink. Dust jacket in very good condition: light edge and fold rubbing, no losses. Original slipcase present, with mild bumping to corners and edges from handling.
Widely regarded as the finest popular history of chess produced in the postwar Eastern Bloc, Gizycki's volume drew on Polish, Russian, German, English, and French scholarship to assemble a panoramic narrative reaching from chaturanga and shatranj through the Lucena and Damiano manuscripts, the Italian and Spanish masters, the coffeehouse culture of eighteenth-century London and Paris, the romantic age of Anderssen and Morphy, the positional revolution of Steinitz and Tarrasch, and the Soviet hegemony of Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, and Petrosian. The Russian edition is enhanced by an authoritative foreword from David Bronstein — challenger for the World Championship in 1951 and one of the most original chess thinkers of the twentieth century — whose essay frames the book for Soviet readers and adds historiographic remarks on the émigré and prerevolutionary Russian masters. The illustrations, reproduced in color on coated paper, include miniatures from medieval manuscripts, Persian and Indian chess boards, ivory and ebony sets from European princely collections, paintings by Lucas van Leyden and Honoré Daumier, and rare period photographs of nineteenth- and twentieth-century tournaments. The volume passed through four Polish editions in less than a decade, attesting to its reception as the standard illustrated history of the game; the present 4th edition represents the most fully revised and corrected text, with expanded coverage of postwar Soviet and Yugoslav chess.