Weinreb, Michael

PERSONAL:

Education: Pennsylvania State University, B.A.; Boston University, M.F.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. E-mail—michaelweinreb@att.net.

CAREER:

Beacon Journal, Akron, OH, sports writer and columnist; Newsday, New York, NY, staff writer until 2006; freelance sportswriter.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Quill Award, 2007, for The Kings of New York.

WRITINGS:

(With Pat Williams) How to Be Like Mike: Life Lessons about Basketball's Best, Health Communications (Deerfield Beach, FL), 2001.

Girl Boy Etc. (fiction), Red Dress Ink (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada), 2004.

The Kings of New York: A Year among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Geniuses Who Make Up America's Top High School Chess Team, Gotham Books (New York, NY), 2007, published as Game of Kings, 2008.

Contributor to anthologies, including Best American Sports Writing. Contributor to magazines and newspapers, including New York Times, ESPN the Magazine, Nerve, and ESPN.com.

SIDELIGHTS:

Michael Weinreb's The Kings of New York: A Year among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Geniuses Who Make Up America's Top High School Chess Team was one of the most-respected nonfiction titles of 2007. The book, described by New York Times Book Review contributor James Kaplan as "thrilling, vigorously reported, [and] deeply empathic," tells the story of the varsity chess team at Brooklyn's Edward R. Murrow High School as it competes during the 2004-2005 season. Not a chess player himself, Weinreb immersed himself in the culture of the game and in the lives of Murrow's eight team members—all boys—including recent immigrants from former Soviet republics as well as Hispanic and African American students. Critics found his account of these young chess stars fresh, fascinating, and complex. The Kings of New York is "not a feel-good story of young geniuses leveraging their chess skills into high grades, big cash prizes, and grand careers," Marjorie Kehe pointed out in a Christian Science Monitor review. "On the contrary, some of these teens are struggling just to finish high school."

Kaplan made a similar point in his New York Times Book Review assessment, noting that the students whom Weinreb profiles are "considerably more complex and vulnerable than the bouncy subtitle would indicate." These fifteen-year-olds include Sal Bercys, from Lithuania, and Alex Lenderman, from Russia, as well as freshman Shawn Martinez, a large, inarticulate boy sporting the hip-hop look. As Weinreb explains in a passage quoted by Kaplan, "Because of the way he looks, because of his sleepy visage and his slow drawl and the extra weight he carries, people have never taken Shawn to be much of an intellectual threat. That's why chess matters to him as much as anything else in his life." Such passages, Kaplan observed, reveal Weinreb's talent for "getting into the skin of his characters—moving in with them, in effect—and making them completely sympathetic."

In an interview with Howard Goldowsky published on the U.S. Chess Federation Web site, Weinreb explained that he considered it extremely important to respect his subjects' dignity and privacy. "I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible," he said of his practice of following the chess team members around every day. They quickly realized "they could play cards in front of me and swear in front of me and I wasn't going to judge them on anything they said or did. Because they were teenagers, I never asked them to reveal anything they didn't want to—I could tell some of them didn't feel comfortable with certain aspects of their lives, so I kept those things out."

Critics also admired Weinreb's ability to make chess interesting and even exciting to general readers. "Weinreb manages to describe a world where players sit for hours with little movement and only hushed whispers, and manages to do so in such a manner that the reader anxiously awaits the next turn of events," wrote Steve Goldberg in Chess Cafe. Entertainment Weekly contributor Wook Kim praised Weinreb's sense of drama and "brisk narrative style," while a writer for Publishers Weekly admired his "deft reporting" his affection for his subjects, and his "terrific writing." Rod Lott, writing in the OK Gazette, deemed The Kings of New York not only one of the best books ever written about chess, but also among the best nonfiction books published in 2007.

Despite such glowing reviews, however, the book did not sell well. Its publisher decided to change the cover art and title for the paperback version, renaming the book Game of Kings and featuring a cover design that shows a teenager with chess pieces in the background. These changes, it was hoped, would more directly convey the book's subject and focus on kids.

Weinreb's other sports titles include How to Be Like Mike: Life Lessons about Basketball's Best, written with Pat Williams. This book is based on interviews with more than 1,400 friends and associates of basketball legend Michael Jordan and includes a wealth of anecdotes about Jordan's influence as a friend, role model, and athlete. Weinreb and Williams also include motivational quotes from a diverse range of thinkers, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rose Kennedy, Bertolt Brecht, James Baldwin, Miles Davis, and Anthony Quinn. As Joyce Fay Fletcher pointed out in a School Library Journal review of the book, Weinreb and Williams portray Jordan "as the most hard-working man in his field," crediting his success more to his persistence than to his athletic talent. Noting the plethora of motivational titles in bookshops and libraries, Booklist reviewer Mary Frances Wilkens appreciated How to Be Like Mike as especially "simple, entertaining, and commonsensical."

A graduate of Boston University's creative writing program in fiction, Weinreb became the first male author for Red Dress Ink with publication of his short-story collection, Girl Boy Etc. Described by Booklist reviewer Kristine Huntley as a book that offers a "frank, often unsettling look into the male mind," it chronicles the postadolescent dating scene and its many comic frustrations. A contributor to Publishers Weekly felt that, despite some lack of depth and sketchy characterizations, the book's "sly humor" and original perspectives make it a "sharp, funny debut collection."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Biography, summer, 2007, James Kaplan, "Chess Players," review of The Kings of New York: A Year among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Geniuses Who Make Up America's Top High School Chess Team, p. 452.

Booklist, September 1, 2001, Mary Frances Wilkens, review of How to Be Like Mike: Life Lessons about Basketball's Best, p. 40; May 15, 2004, Kristine Huntley, review of Girl Boy Etc., p. 1604.

Christian Science Monitor, March 6, 2007, Marjorie Kehe, review of The Kings of New York,

Entertainment Weekly, March 2, 2007, Wook Kim, review of The Kings of New York, p. 72.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 2006, review of The Kings of New York, p. 1214.

New York Times Book Review, March 4, 2007, James Kaplan, "Mad Hot Chessboard."

Orlando Business Journal, December 28, 2001, Noelle Haner-Dorr, "‘Outwork Everybody, and You'll Be like Mike’," p. 4.

Psychology Today, March 1, 2007, Catherine New, review of The Kings of New York, p. 29.

Publishers Weekly, April 26, 2004, review of Girl Boy Etc., p. 42; January 8, 2007, review of The Kings of New York, p. 44; October 1, 2007, "‘Kings’ Gets New Paper Strategy," p. 12.

School Library Journal, January 2002, Joyce Fay Fletcher, review of How to Be Like Mike, p. 173.

Times Literary Supplement, May 4, 2007, Daniel Johnson, "Board Portraits," p. 25.

ONLINE

Big Lead,http://thebiglead.com/ (December 2, 2007), "Freelancing, Rejection and Chess: An Interview with Author Michael Weinreb."

Chess Cafe,http://www.chesscafe.com/ (December 2, 2007), Steve Goldberg, "Masterful Portrait."

Chessville,http://www.chessville.com/ (December 2, 2007), Rick Kennedy, review of The Kings of New York.

Gelf Magazine,http://www.gelfmagazine.com/ archives/ (December 2, 2007), Nick Matros, "Brooklyn's Unlikely Chess Champs."

Gotham Writers' Workshop Web site,http://www.writingclasses.com/FacultyBios/ (December 2, 2007), Michael Weinreb profile.

Guardian,http://books.guardian.co.uk/ (December 2, 2007), Stephen Moss, "Chess with God (and Others)."

GuideLive,http://www.guidelive.com/ (December 2, 2007), Tim Redman, "Check Mates."

List.co,http://www.list.co.uk/ (December 2, 2007), Doug Johnstone, review of The Kings of New York.

Michael Weinreb Home Page,http://www.michaelweinreb.com (December 2, 2007).

MySpace,http://www.myspace.com/michaelweinreb (December 2, 2007), Michael Weinreb profile.

OK Gazette (Oklahoma City, OK), http://www.okgazette.com/ (December 2, 2007), Rod Lott, review of The Kings of New York.

Small Spiral Notebook,http://www.smallspiralnotebook.com/ (December 2, 2007), Steve Hansen, review of Girl Boy Etc.

USA Today,http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/ (December 2, 2007), Bob Minzesheimer, review of The Kings of New York.

U.S. Chess Federation Web site, http://main.uschess.org/ (December 2, 2007), Howard Goldowsky, "Looks at Books: A Conversation with Michael Weinreb."