List of bridge books
Bridge, or more formally contract bridge, is a trick-taking card game of skill and chance played by four players. This article consists of lists of bridge books deemed significant by various authors and organizations.
History
Books on bridge and its predecessor games have spanned centuries with the earliest known popular book on the subject of Whist having been published by Edmond Hoyle in 1742 or 1743.
The timelines in the evolutionary path to modern contract bridge books are generally as follows:
- 17th century: the emergence of Whist from earlier games such as Ruff and Honours and Triumph
- 18th and 19th centuries: Whist is widely played with many variants in scoring methods; similar games such as Vint and Khedive are also played
- 1886: Evidence that Bridge-Whist has emerged with John Collinson's four page pamphlet entitled Biritch, or Russian Whist. (Earlier, in 1869, Christian Vanderheid, an Austrian writer about card games, published Gründlicher Selbstunterricht zur Erlernung des Jarolasch oder das russische Whist (Extensive Self-teaching of Yeralash (Jarolasch) or Russian Whist). The game described by Vanderheid is almost identical to Collinson's Biritch, with the exception that it is not played with a dummy.)
- 1903-1932: from the first known publication on Auction Bridge (also known as Royal Auction Bridge and simply, Auction) to the last publication of Laws of Auction Bridge by the Portland Club
- c1915: Bridge Plafond emerges in France and Belgium and is essentially contract bridge without vulnerability
- late 1925: a significant new scoring system was proposed by Harold Vanderbilt introducing the concept of vulnerability, large bonuses for slams and heavy penalties for undertricks. Within two years, "Auction was swept off the tables" in the dawn of modern contract bridge.
- 1926-1935: numerous books on bidding are published and compete for status as the 'official system' of choice. Ely Culbertson rises to prominence in the USA as a self-promoting bridge player, challenging his English and European counterparts to international matches all the while building a business empire based on his bridge writing and related investments. In the early Thirties, Acol is fashioned by S. J. Simon and Jack Marx, and eventually becomes the most popular bidding system in Britain.
- 1935: Culbertson publishes the first Encyclopedia of Bridge.
Precursor games
The following are books on the various precursor games to modern contract bridge; the first books on contract bridge appeared in 1927.
People and culture
The following books provide insights into the people and culture of contract bridge and while they may contain occasional references to certain technical aspects of the game, they are generally not instructional in theme. Fictional novels with a bridge theme are listed separately.
- Fictional novels
Encyclopedias, dictionaries and almanacs
The following are listed chronologically:
Book of the Year Awards
American Bridge Teachers' Association (ABTA)
Each year since 1982, ABTA has recognized one or more books as contributing significantly to the teaching of contract bridge. The following are the award recipients:
International Bridge Press Association (IBPA)
Since 2004, the IBTA has chosen one bridge-related title of exceptional merit. Thus far, recipients include:
American Contract Bridge League (ACBL) surveys
The ACBL has conducted the following surveys:
1994 survey
The ACBL survey of 1994 was a poll of well-known players and writers only and resulted in the following list of the 20 best books of all time:
2007 survey
The ACBL survey of 2007 resulted in two lists of favourite books as follows:
The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge (7th edition) recommendations
The 7th edition of the Encyclopedia recommended the following books with the caveat that the "list on this page is by no means definitive. It was influenced to a degree by surveys published in 1994 and 2007 in the Bridge Bulletin." Listed alphabetically by first author surname.
Mark Horton's recommendations
In his 1999 book, The Mammoth Book of Bridge, Mark Horton lists his recommendations for "Bridge Books You Should Read", grouped as follows:
Classics
For beginners
For advancing players
For experienced players
British Bridge Almanack survey
The British Bridge Almanack reported on a survey of leading British bridge personalities. The survey presented a chronological list of 16 books by British authors deemed to have made a significant contribution to the development of the game. It asked the personalities to add as many as three titles of their choosing and then to identify their top five. Of the 24 reported respondents, 19 identified one or more titles.
Initial list
Added titles
These additional titles were nominated by respondents.
- Bridge is an Easy Game by Iain Macleod, 1952
- Country Life Book of Bridge by Maurice Harrison-Gray, 1972
- Adventures in Card-Play by Géza Ottlik and Hugh Kelsey, 1979
- The Bidding Dictionary by Alan Truscott, 1996
- The Big Game: Rubber Bridge in a London club by Richard Sheehan, 1999
Most mentioned
These were the leaders by number of selections (as many as five per respondent).
- 17 mentions: The Expert Game by Terence Reese, 1960
- 14 mentions: Why You Lose at Bridge by S. J. Simon, 1945
- 12 mentions: Killing Defence at Bridge by Hugh Kelsey, 1966
- 11 mentions: Reese on Play by Terence Reese, 1947
- 8 mentions: Play Bridge with Reese by Terence Reese, 1960
- 7 mentions: Card Play Technique by Victor Mollo and Nico Gardener, 1955
No other title received more than three mentions.
Bibliographies
Encyclopedic bibliographies
Several encyclopedias on the subject of bridge have provided bibliographies of bridge related publications.
The Encyclopedia of Bridge
The Encyclopedia of Bridge of 1935 acknowledges certain authors' publications in their brief biographies but no summary tabulation or categorization of bridge literature or evaluative commentary is provided.
The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge
The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge (OEB) is a publication of the American Contract Bridge League first published in 1964 with the 7th edition published in 2011. Up to the 6th, each OEB edition contains a bibliography of bridge related publications grouped by subject (history, bidding, play, reference, etc.) and rates selected publications as: (a) having made a significant contribution to the technical development of the game; (b) being mandatory for inclusion in a modern technical library; (c) being optional for inclusion in a modern technical library; or (d) none of the foregoing. Subject categories and ratings for a publication may vary between editions of the OEB. The 1st edition bibliography spans 8 pages and lists about 400 titles; the 6th edition bibliography, prepared by Tim Bourke, spans 60 pages and lists approximately 4,100 titles; Up to the 6th, each edition of The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge contains a bibliography of bridge and bridge related books; the following is a summary of their contents.
OEB
Edition |
Page Range |
Number
of Pages |
Number
of Categories |
Number
of Entries |
| 1 |
684-691 |
8 |
15 |
|
| 2 |
783-793 |
11 |
15 |
|
| 3 |
849-858 |
10 |
15 |
|
| 4 |
902-922 |
21 |
17 |
|
| 5 |
Not numbered |
38 |
|
|
| 6 |
Not numbered |
60 |
29 |
4096 |
| 7 |
Not included |
0 |
0 |
0 |
The Bridge Players' Encyclopedia
The Bridge Players Encyclopedia (BPE) was published in 1967 by Paul Hamlyn (London) and is an International Edition based on The Official Encyclopedia of Bridge of 1964 but geared to the needs of British and European players. The edition modified American spellings, "translated" bidding structures to the more widely used Acol system, omitted biographical notes on some lesser known Americans and added biographical notes on some British and European players. Although content differs from the 1964 OEB, the publication contains a 9-page bibliography of approximately 500 titles with subject categorization and rating schemes similar to those of the previous OEB editions.
Bibliographies in Wikipedia articles
By subject
By author
Other bibliographies
Bibliography
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