Books on Chess History

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess-equipment/any-books-better-than-murrays-history-of-chess

Maybe try:

The Big Book of World Chess Championships by Andre Schulz

The Psychology of the Chess Player by Reuben Fine

Modern Ideas in Chess by Richard Reti

Masters of The Chessboard by Richard Reti

A Short History of Chess by H. J. R. Murray

Grandmasters of Chess by Harold C. Schonberg

The Development of Chess Style by Dr. Max Euwe

The Great Chess Masters and Their Games by Fred Reinfeld

The World's Great Chess Games by Reuben Fine

Kings of Chess by William Winter

Golden Treasury of Chess by Francis J. Wellmuth

The History of Chess in Fifty Moves by Bill Price

An example of a chess history article can be seen at:

https://www.chess.com/article/view/key-moments-in-time-lasker-s-last-stand

Virtually anything by Edward Winter is going to be good chess history.  His website chesshistory.com is also quite good.  Batgirl here on chess.com is also quite amazing. 

Yes, Batgirl is performing a valuable service for this chess site.

Thank you, guys 😊😊

My Great Predecessor by Kasparov.

I actually don't think much of My Great Predecessors.  Too much plagarism.  Too much recycling of the same old stories, complete with the traditional errors.  I do have all of them and I think the game analysis is very good.  But the history I find to be rather meh, at best.  

I would add that I recently boughtJimmy Adams's book on Chigorin and it is a masterpiece of chess history writing.  Also, virtually anything published by McFarland is going to be pretty good.  

Some stories have been written down that can be kind of fun.  Along that line, The Joy of Chess is pretty good.  Finding Bobby Fischer is a book of interviews, many of which are of historic interest.  The World Champions I Knew is a book I don't personally own, but it's a story of one GM's rememberings that has gotten much praise.

Chess Duels by Seirawan provides some good historical tidbits.

There are two books that I see consistently appearing on Top 10 Chess book lists that might be topical:

Tal vs Botvinnik 1960 by Mikhail Tal about their World Championship match. Botvinnik had been World Champion for more than a decade and Tal was the young upstart who preferred wild tactical positions vs Botvinnik's solid positional play.

Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953 by David Bronstein, about one of the strongest chess tournaments in history. Players who participated:

Averbakh (USSR)
Boleslavsky (USSR)
Bronstein (USSR)
Euwe (Netherlands) - former World Champion
Geller (USSR)
Gligoric (Yugoslavia)
Keres (USSR)
Kotov (USSR)
Najdorf (Argentina)
Petrosian (USSR) - future World Champion
Reshevsky (USA) - famous child chess prodigy
Smyslov (USSR) - soon to be World Champion, endgame master
Stahlberg (Sweden)
Szabo (Hungary)
Taimanov (USSR)

if you literally mean "Phisical History" of chess in general

H.J.R Murray, A History of Chess

Gareth Williams, Master Pieces

Linder, Isaak Maxovich, Chess in old Russia

Linder, Isaak, The Art of Chess Pieces

These are good ones