This is Your Brain on Sports is the book for sports fans searching for a deeper understanding of the games they watch and the people who play them. Sports Illustrated executive editor and bestselling author L. Jon Wertheim teams up with Tufts psychologist Sam Sommers to take readers on a wild ride into the inner world of sports. Through the prism of behavioral economics, neuroscience, and psychology, they reveal the hidden influences and surprising cues that inspire and derail us—on the field and in the stands—and by extension, in corporate board rooms, office settings, and our daily lives. In this irresistible narrative romp, Wertheim and Sommers usher us from professional football to the NBA to Grand Slam tennis, from the psychology of athletes self-handicapping their performance in the boxing ring or the World Series, to an explanation of why even the glimpse of a finish line can lift us beyond ordinary physical limits. They explore why Tom Brady and other starting NFL quarterbacks all seem to look like fashion models; why fans of teams like the Cubs, Mets, and any franchise from Cleveland love rooting for a loser; why the best players make the worst coaches; why hockey goons (and fans) would rather fight at home than on the road; and why the arena t-shirt cannon has something to teach us about human nature. In short, this book is an entertaining and thought-provoking journey into how psychology and behavioral science collide with the universe of wins-and-losses, coaching changes, underdogs, and rivalry games. — Boston Globe, Best Books of 2016, Sports

Modern chess began in 1851 in the London Tournament of the Crystal Palace Exposition. Today, the principles of winning play have been explored and codified: a beginner can learn more about chess in one year, than a master learned a century ago during his entire career. This book is the first detailed presentation, by a Grand Master, of a complete analysis of the world's best games. For all who are interested in the fine points, the author has selected the most notable examples of brilliant play and strategy, the attack and the defense. Among the masters whose best games are to be found in the work are: Alekhine, Botvinnik, Capablanca, Euwe, Lasker, Marshall. Morphy, Rubinstein, Steinitz. Tarrasch, Tartakower, and many, many others. Reuben Fine had not taken chess seriously until late high school days. Yet he became a Grand \faster at the age of twenty-one, and was dual winner of the great AVRO Tournament of 1938. Dr. Fine was officially ranked - on the basis of twenty years of tournament play - as the Number 1 player of the United States, and a Challenger for the World Championship. Dr. Fine taught psychology at the College of the City of New York and at Brooklyn College. He and his family lived in New York City, where he practiced psychoanalysis. Reuben Fine was been a member of three U. S. World Championship Teams. He tied for first prize with Keres in the great AVRO tournament of 1938 and has won the U. S. Speed Championship four rimes. Among his famous books are The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings,The Middle Game in Chess, Basic Chess Endings, Practical Chess Openings, and his great and continuing best seller, Chess the Easy Way.

After winning 6 of the 12 Majors from 2000 to 2002, Tiger Woods struggled in 2003. Four unknown golf players--Mike Weir, Jim Furyk, Ben Curtis, and Shaun Micheel--would seize the day, rising to become champions in his wake . Mike Weir--considered a good golfer but not a great one--triumphed in The Masters, becoming the first Canadian to win a Major. Jim Furyk emerged victorious in the U.S. Open. In the British Open, Ben Curtis became the only player since Francis Ouimet in 1913 to prevail on his first time out, and Shaun Micheel came from nowhere to prevail at the PGA Championship. How does one moment of glory affect the unsung underdog for years to follow? In Moment of Glory , John Feinstein returns to the unlikely year of 2003 and chronicles the personal and professional struggles of these four players. With great affection for the underdog and extraordinary access to the players, he then looked to the 2008 season, giving readers an insider's look into how winning (and losing) major championships changes players' lives.

This was the first book by Reuben Fine and one of the first, if not the very first, by Fred Reinfeld. Both were young men. Fine was 21. Reinfeld was 24. Both went on to become not only strong chess players but prolific writers of books, especially Reinfeld who wrote more than one hundred chess books. Both Fine and Reinfeld became noted authors of books on other subjects as well. Reinfeld wrote more than fifty books on other subjects such as checkers, coin collecting and stamp collecting. Fine wrote college textbooks on psychology and psychoanalysis. Dr. Lasker's Chess Career 1889-1914 has become a rare book, almost impossible to obtain. I bought the book used for this reprint from a collector of rare books in Denmark. The original title was Dr. Lasker's Chess Career, Part I, 1889-1914. This was obviously intended to be the first in a series of books about World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker (1868-1941). When this book was written, Emanuel Lasker was still alive. However, no other volume of this book was ever written, so the title has been shortened to just Dr. Lasker's Chess Career 1889-1914. Emanuel Lasker burst on the chess scene by winning his first tournament in 1888-1889 at the age of 20. He then won several tournaments and played a series of matches in 1889-1893 against some of the strongest players in the world, winning them all. However, when he challenged the World Chess Champion Wilhelm Steinitz to a match in 1894, it was believed that he stood no chance. The world was shocked when he defeated Steinitz and became World Chess Champion, a title he held for the next 27 years until he lost to Capablanca in 1921.