The Kings of New York

An award-winning sportswriter takes you inside a year with the nations top high school chess team. With strict admission standards and a progressive curriculum, Brooklyns Edward R. Murrow High School has long been one of New Yorks public-education success stories, serving a diverse neighborhood of immigrants and minorities and ranking among the nations best high schools. At Murrow, there are no sports teams, and the closest thing to jocks are found on the schools powerhouse chess team, which annually competes for the national championship. In The Kings of New York sportswriter Michael Weinreb follows the members of the Murrow chess team through an entire season, from cash games in Washington Square Park to city and state tournaments to the SuperNationals in Nashville, where this eclectic bunch competes against private schoolers and suburbanites. Along the way, Weinreb brings to life a number of colorful characters: the Yale-educated calculus teacher (and former semipro hockey player) who guides the savants while struggling to find funding for his team; an aspiring rapper and tournament hustler who plays with cutthroat instinct; the teams lone girl, a shy Ukrainian immigrant; the Puerto Rican teen from the rough neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant who plays an ingenious opening gambit named the Orangutan; and the Lithuanian immigrant and team star whose chess rating is climbing toward grandmaster status. In the bestselling tradition of such books as Word Freak and Friday Night Lights, The Kings of New York is a riveting look inside the world of competitive chess and an inspiring profile of young genius.