The life stories of 23 great chess players who reached the top but for various reasons ended their careers prematurely. The names of these players can be found in pictures 2 and 3. The biographical medallions, each between 8 and 16 pages long, provide much interesting information also from chess history and are accompanied by photographs and nearly 200 mostly annotated games. Javier Cordero is a Spanish chess historian, organizer and arbiter.