International chess master Jeremy Silman, "whose books were popular with players looking to improve their game," died September 21, the New York Times reported. He was 69. Silman wrote more than a dozen books, several of which he revised and updated multiple times. He also co-wrote a half-dozen more.
In 1990, Gwen Feldman, his wife, founded Silman-James Press, which publishes some of his bestselling books, with James Fox. She said that to date, Silman's The Complete Book of Chess Strategy (2004) has sold more than 170,000 copies; The Amateur's Mind, 2nd Edition (2000) more than 90,000; Silman's Complete Endgame Course (2007) more than 87,000; and How to Reassess Your Chess, 4th Edition (2011) more than 73,000. The first edition of How to Reassess Your Chess was published in 1986, and total sales of the first three editions were about 85,000. Feldman added that Silman's books have sold more than a half-million copies in the U.S.,and several of his most popular titles have been translated into French and German.
Silman's works "have been sought out both for his writing style, which is conversational and colloquial, and for his practical advice on how to cut down on errors in thinking and planning--the most difficult part of the game to master," the Times noted.
The writer was a celebrity in the chess world. During tournaments in Los Angeles, near where he lived, Silman would often be invited to give lectures that were "standing room only," said Dr. Anthony Saidy, a friend who, like Silman, is an international master. "He became a pillar of the chess-teaching world."
Silman also had "a robust social life in the 1970s and early '80s, suffused with episodes of drugs and sex," the Times wrote. In 2013, he published Autobiography of a Goat, a fantasy book set in San Francisco that drew liberally from his own experiences.