I’m about half way through this book. It is interesting on many levels. Highly recommended to all. Our ED and Board would probably find many of his insights helpful for growing organized chess, both rated and unrated.
amazon.com/Moves-That-Matte … 271&sr=8-1
The Times Literary Supplement takes a somewhat different point of view.
The book reminded me of one of those collections of newspaper columns, ordered in a not-too-successful attempt at continuity. Initially, I found it riveting, but this tapered off toward the end. Still, it was a much better read than one would expect from the Times review.
I’m about 3/4 through the book. The review isn’t accurate in my view. It takes quotes out of context just to make the book look bad. That opinion is also argued by several posters who discussed the review with the review’s author online.
ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=10543
I found chapters 2, 3 and 4 of particular interest. I had a good laugh over the reviewer’s comments on Martin Heidegger. Having read Being and Time and Being and Nothingness in translation along with Jaspers, Camus, Hegel, Marx and Marcuse, I have to think that Justin Horton was either being polemical or simply didn’t understand much of what Rowson was discussing. One forum wag ruminated that perhaps Horton hadn’t really read the book. The book, IMO, has far more to offer than Kasparov’s tome that was likely penned by Mig Greenberg.
The book is inexpensive and, IMO, well worth the money. If you have access to a good public or academic library, you’ll likely find it there.
One other thing about the review was a bit odd. Horton writes, “There are not “many historians” who believe that the world champion, Alexander Alekhine, had food planted in his windpipe by Soviet assassins in 1946.” There has been much written about this. IMO, the better view is that Alekhine was murdered. Whether by the Soviets or by French assassins is open to debate. I suspect the French. Given how Leon Trotsky had his head bashed in with a hammer in Mexico, I don’t see the Soviets being as subtle as to fake a choking death.
If this book is like J. Rowson’s other works, it will be interesting, thought provoking, but ultimately not much use for improving your chess on a practical level. Rowson is interested in “metachess” and psychology. If you like that sort of thing, read it. It may mess up your game if you try to apply one or more of the suggestions. Extrapolations from chess to life or business should be read with a grain of salt. A GM title does not confer omniscience in all other things. Rowson’s best work was “Understanding the Grunfeld.”
His approach is that of a philosopher looking at the nature of systems and relationships in the world. One of those systems is chess with which he has some experience. Chess is one lens that, for Rowson , gives insight into, or at least provokes inquiry into life in a world where people think and process in certain ways (systems/formalities of language and practice) that many can’t step out side of to gain another perspective of reality. Not that he postulates that any human can perceive an ultimate reality. He strikes me as heading in an anti-positivist direction similar to that taken by Goedel** in his famous mathematical theorem. If no formal system can encompass all truth, alternative truths must exist. How then to glimpse them? IMO, that’s what he’s up to. finding a way to peer over the fence at other truths that may negate some or all of the truths on his side of the fence.
What might this mean for a tournament chess player? It could mean that a rating system is negated by a truth of chess as something more than ratings and titles. I don’t think he would argue that the system of ratings itself is necessarily invalid, but that chess is so much more than just ratings, titles and championships. That meta aspect of chess should be of interest to those involved in trying to grow organized chess for it challenges us to think of chess organizations as more than tournaments and ratings vessels. When he discusses Piaget’s educational theories regarding mistakes and the study done five years or so ago that showed chess has no discernable effect on academic performance on standardized tests, his meta analysis comes into focus. His view, based on his own experience with chess, is that there are likely benefits that chess is responsible for which don’t manifest themselves for many years.
**I was surprised that Rowson didn’t discuss Goedel’s Theorem. I think I’ll send him an email and ask if he’s considered it. I suspect that he has.
The Times Literary Supplement review has dissuaded me from purchasing the book. Leon Trotsky met his death by ice axe through the skull.
I am more sympathetic to Rowson’s earlier metachess books than you are. There is a sporting aspect to chess, and having the “meta-sense” to know when to press & when to cower can benefit one’s performance. Several top trainers have praised both of these books. But OK, you are not entirely wrong about the relative worth of Understanding the Grünfeld. 
The Moves that Matter might be directly useful to young 2400+ players who wonder whether they should make chess a career (or even more specifically, when & how to exit). Otherwise, it’s not going to change anyone’s life. But I read most of the essays with interest, and recommend it to all. If you enjoy the following quotations, place your order now. If not, you may skip with a clear conscience. (Yes, there is a connect-the-quotations laziness in the worst of Rowson, and Justin Horton’s TLS review nicely highlights the book’s faults. But one should also look for the best in authors & players, as Emerson & Billy Beane do.)
We have to cope with the position and cope with our (inherent-for-the-moment) limitations as players. Greg Norman had all of Nicklaus’s gifts as a golfer, save perhaps Nicklaus’s “profoundly personal” coping skills (18 majors vs. 2 majors).
Go into any skittles room, and you will find many combatants who “identify with some moves more than others.”
I really like this last quotation: chess is a playground in which we can acquire expertise in something insanely difficult that doesn’t really matter (shh), and later transfer our expertise-acquisition skills to a more important field.
You are of course correct that chess has little practical application in the “real world.” It is to our benefit to keep this secret closely guarded!