He was indeed the greatest!

On the subject of Paul Morphy, please see my biographical novel about Morphy's life at http://www.mattfullerty.com and http://theprideandthesorrow.blogspot.com

The Pride and the Sorrow: Press Release

Paul Morphy's story is a rites of passage tale about a boy who becomes famous by playing chess. It is also a cautionary tale about New Orleans, family pride and a mind who cannot cope with the real world...The Pride and the Sorrow is a cross between Josh Waitzkin's Searching for Bobby Fischer (about a chess prodigy) and Vladimir Nabokov's The Luzhin Defense (about chess causing madness). Paul resists gambling and dueling and despite Morphy family rivalries he takes on the Europeans at their own game. But the red-light district and temptations on the other side of New Orleans are never far away...

The Pride and the Sorrow: Book Review, June 2008

New Zealand novelist Geoff Cush, a member of the Bookhabit judging panel, had the following to say about the Bookhabit Award 2008: "What made Matt Fullerty's writing stand out, from the very first sentence, was an unusually strong and individual way with words. Taking us into the vanished world of old America and Europe he uses a highly textured language to give an almost physical experience of being in that place and time. Drawing subtle lines between a society top-heavy with leisure and the profligate genius it produced in Morphy, he holds back the historical and personal reckoning while letting it gather and brood like the storm that finally washes away New Orleans. In my view this makes The Pride and the Sorrow a stand-out all rounder in the craft of literary fiction."

Thank you for reading!

http://www.mattfullerty.com

My page specifically about Paul Morphy and Bobby Fischer is here http://mattfullerty.com/chess_paulmorphy_neworleans_bobbyfischer.aspx

Also, you can read more about Paul Morphy at http://www.paulmorphychess.com

I hate to pop the balloons of people who say chess causes madness, but it's the other way around. There is a lot of scientific evidence that the genes that cause schizophrenia also inable the aflicted to function at such a high level in mathmatics, chess, etc. There's a high incidence of schizophrenia among extremely gifted mathmetitions as well. Do you think doing math causes madness too? 

Just because YOU don't happen to be sure about it, doesn't prove it doesn't.