Bobby Fischer Goes to War audiobook

Audiobook: A fascinating analysis of both the players and the chess culture and its history in both the United States and Soviet Union leading up to the famous duel between Fischer and Spassky in 1972 when chess, for a short period of time, captured the attention of the world. Bobby Fischer had never grown up and was uniquely focused on chess. Outside of the game he could be obnoxious, eccentric, bratty, rude, and incomprehensible. At the chess table he was unfailingly polite, obsessed with the rules and the game. The beginning of the book is a bit disjointed with quick summaries of his appearances or lack thereof at national and international tournaments. His paranoia and need for control was already quite apparent as was his chess brilliance (he had little brilliance in most other areas of his life.)The author is stronger when discussing Spassky and chess in Russia. Chess players were expected to play in service to the state where the aftereffects of the "Great Patriotic War" was a sort of Russian exceptionalism that celebrated state nationalism. Everything was in service of the state and chess was no exception.Their match became a symbolic battle for leadership in the Cold War. Here you had the Soviets who had dominated chess for decades on the one hand, and the lone, individualist Fischer on the other. Spassky was complicated. A Russian patriot, he was no Soviet one. He loved the game and admired Fischer who hated everyone and was the archetypal loner with no admirable qualities.The authors could not get an interview with Fischer who was notoriously devoted to his privacy so the reader might sometimes feel as if the book is mostly about Spassky and the Russian perspective since they were quite willing to be interviewed. That's OK. Fischer’s erratic and paranoid behavior make him less prone to analysis.Whatever else you say about Fischer, he was a tormented soul one cannot help but feel sorry for. He was often derided and celebrated. In the end he must have been extremely lonely and he died alone and embittered, a prisoner to his genius. I remember the extraordinary attention surrounding the match which probably did more to elevate the popularity of chess than anything before.Political science junkies and chess fanatics will love this book. Nicely read by Sam Tsoutsouvas.

An extraordinary examination, not only of the man and his simultaneous ascent to greatness and descent into madness, but also of one of the more interesting sideshows in the forty-five year standoff between the US and the Soviet Union known as the Cold War. In many ways, the 1972 World Chess Championship between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky was a microcosm of the Cold War itself: it encompassed the paranoia of espionage (including accusations of drugging, kidnapping attempts and even mind control); the elevation of an otherwise trivial skirmish (prior to the match, chess was about as popular in the US as competitive turkey calling) into a winner-take-all battle for global hegemony; and the polarization of the world behind either a Soviet or an American in what became the most improbably important sporting event of all time.And at the center of the narrative is a man as fascinating and complicated as the political backdrop against which he played. Bobby Fisher was quite arguably the greatest player to ever open with a pawn. He was also bitterly antisemitic, despite the fact that he himself was Jewish. He made petulant, seemingly impossible, demands about everything ranging from the height of the bishops, to the brightness of the lighting, to the size of the victory purse (he routinely demanded prizes of hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single tournament at a time when most chess grandmasters made less than fifteen grand over the course of an entire year), but such was the magnitude of his talent that he usually got his way. By all accounts, he had the genius of a Mozart trapped inside the temperament of an Attila the Hun.Even if you're not a chess fan, it's hard to imagine not finding anything in Bobby Fischer Goes to War that would make it worth reading. It is in equal parts a psychological study, political thriller and a biography of one of the most mercurial and strange personalities of the 20th century.

I had no idea Bobby Fischer was such a jerk. As an amateur chess player, I had always held Fischer aloft as an American hero, but now after actually reading about his skills and exploits, I can hold a much more accurate picture of him. The book does a meticulously thorough job elucidating the political, cultural, and social aspects surrounding the great World Championship of 1972. The details are rooted in anecdotes, character descriptions, loads of primary sources, and a comprehensible approach to the complex events. Although chess is fundamentally "just a board game," this book displayed how, at the Grandmaster level, it is as much a battle of psyches as of skills, as much a metaphor for ideological power as it is of mental dexterity. The antics of Fischer, and the gentlemanly sportmanship of his Soviet opponent, Spassky, make for great storytelling in which the guy we'd love to hate, the USSR, is really the more admirable of the two. Amidst the obviously meticulously researched information and incredibly thorough portrayal of events and characters, the only defect is that the authors occassionally jump around from a particular line of description or narrative, making it difficult to follow. This is minor, however, and the largely objective and fundamentally formal tone covers over the moments of obviously biased perception. Overall, a thrilling informative work, enjoyable immediately for any chess lover of any nation.

This is a fascinating look into the Fischer-Spassky chess match in Iceland in 1972. One thing I really liked about it is it showed what a narcistic kook Fischer was but used his real life antics as an example as opposed to the usual "he was crazy because he said mean things about Jews" nonsense. To be honest the fact that he was willing to say non pc things was about all there was to like about Bobby Fischer. Its virtually unbelievable the hoops that were jumped through to accomodate Fischer in order to make this match happen. Whether he meant it to work out this way or not Fischers antics also served as psychological warfare that completely drained Spassky of his energy and focus. This is not a conspiracy related book but there is also a whole chapter that looks into whether the CIA was somehow poisoning Spasskys food or using some sort of radio wave type secret weaponry to disrupt his thought patterns during the course of the chess match. Spassky himself brushes it aside but to this day many people who were there, including Spasskys wife, believe that this was the case. This is the best book I have run across pertaining to Bobby Fischer.

Excellent book on the match -- the chess and the antics -- though the authors get a bit over their heads trying to relate it to contemporary Cold War politics. Fischer is a one-of-kind loony, beyond any game theory the Rand Corporation could invent.

This is another book I don't really have time to properly review right now, but even for someone like me, an expert player and an amateur Fischer historian, this was enlightening and very interesting.But this would be good for anyone who has never played chess. Fischer is a very compelling, interesting person, and this book overturns one of his most popular narratives - that of the conquering, Cold War hero.This book really makes me want to know more about Spassky. Even within chess circles, he is largely remembered as 'the guy who lost to Fischer", but he seems like a very complex, interesting person.My only knock on the book is in the organization of it. At times, I felt like the book lost focus, and perhaps this was from stretching the minutiae of some of the less interesting storylines. In other words, because the authors took us down some of the corridors, they had to let us into the rooms, but not all the rooms were interesting or all that relevant to the central thesis.Overall, a very good read. Recommended for chessplayers and non-chessplayers alike.

In cultural history, certain events are churned up, when the world tunes into them and it appears that that a majority of heads are fixated on what is going on here.In July, Reykjavík Iceland had the World's focus on it because two men were shuffling wooden pieces over 64 squares. The game was Chess, it was the World Championship and a wildly peculiar genius was about to end the quarter century Soviet domination of the event.This game became known as the Match of the Century and in this book the authors go to work, clarifying what took place over two months in Iceland.Why this book works, and why many people still remember this time, is because Bobby Fischer is enigma at the heart of this story. How this child prodigy at Chess came to represent the United States in a battle that took place against the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War is quite a story in itself.Only ten years previously the world stopped as the Cuban missile crisis appeared to bring us all to the edge of the end days. Now a Jewish kid from Brooklyn raised by his mother who was both a teacher and nurse, was taking on the best that the Soviet chess machine could throw at him in the form of Boris Spassky.Bobby lost the first game, where he should've been able to manage a draw and then forfeited the second because he demanded the withdrawal of TV Cameras. When he came back to the table he won game 3 and began to turn the whole match around. His play was always aggressive and exciting but the level of paranoia and intrigue which he brought to the match only served to heighten the excitement and wild speculation about at that time.After his victory his celebrity was at it's height. Unfortunately, he refused to defend his title in 1975 and became more reclusive and never really played again until 1992 - when he did a rematch against Spassky but angered the US Government by breaking an embargo by going to Yugoslavia to play the match.He was anti-American and anti-Semitic, (strange for a Jewish American you might think) and produced his own radio shows where he would vent these hatreds. He returned to Iceland in 2005 and lived out his last three years there, on the island where he'd ascended the heights to be World Chess Champion back in the Summer of 72.This book is a great history of that summer when the world watched Bobby take his crown.

Čitajući razne žanrove i bez predrasuda naći ćete ponekada na nebrušeni dijamant kojeg vam nitko nije preporučio, uz kojeg ćete se zabaviti i osjećati se kako ste naučili nešto novo. Bit ćete zadovoljni što ste pročitali takvu knjigu i tjednima ćete je, s potpunim neuspjehom, preporučati prijateljima.Ovo je takva knjiga. Ovo je knjiga o šahu. Ali ovo je knjiga koja je puno više o toga, ovo je knjiga o događaju kojeg je pratio cijeli svijet, koji je promijenio stanje tog sporta i postao dio povijesti. Ovo je ideološka borba istoka i zapada, SADa i SSSRa, kapitalizma i komunizma, ovo je produljena ruka hladnoga rata. Zapravo, šah često izgleda samo kao bojno polje na i oko kojeg su se događale turbulentne stvari.Premda je povijest i njena događanja nemoguće promijeniti, knjiga je napisana na takav način da će više podsjećati na neki krimić, okretat ćete stranicu za stranicom kako bi saznali što je dalje bilo. Ne morate uopće poznavati pravila šahovske igre kako bi uživali u knjizi.Nadam se kako će barem netko tko pročita recenziju razmisliti o čitanju ovoga.

A friend (who plays chess) lent me this book to read. I was a little skeptical as to how much I would be able to comprehend and I put it off for 2 weeks. What a mistake! The book is fantastically written and delves not into the plays themselves but all the characters surrounding and leading up to 1972 championship games Fischer v. Spasski. As well as basic psychological profiles of the two chess grandmasters, the writers full develop the supporting cast and ideologies in play on all sides.Highly recommend the book; there are only a few paragraphs dealing with actual chess moves.

I was turning a score around in my head while I was finishing this book. I had really low expectations for it. I pretty much nabbed it on a whim. I used to play a fair amount of chess but it's not an interest of mine. However, judging from the fact that I'm now following famous matches online and asking my family if there are any "unused sets" lying around their place--I think it's fair to say this book had an impact on me.I could recommend this to anyone even if you don't know a pawn from a queen. The authors stumbled on a truly incredible story and do an excellent job of relating this simple chess match to the whole zeitgeist of the era. There is more political espionage, dramatic tempers and mysterious plots in this book than anything Tom Clancy or Dennis Lehane ever penned.

The book that got me playing chess again after a 25 year break.

Bobby Fischer Goes to War focuses on the famous World Championship Chess match between the Champion Russian Boris Spasky and the challenger the American Bobby Fischer. I mention the countries Fischer and Spasky are from because they play a major role in the chess match since it was played at the height of the cold war. Both men dealt with the added pressure of believing they were representing the good side in the battle of good verse evil. Henry Kissinger evens makes an appearance in the book as he is believed to have played a key role in getting Fischer to actually play. I happen to find chess very interesting so that helped me enjoy this book but I don't think that is a requirement because for better or worse the focus is on the build up to the match and all of the crazy antics that took place around the actual games. I have read quite a bit about Fischer including a biography before so I already knew how eccentric Bobby Fischer was but I was still surprised how difficult he was in the lead up and during this match. I think it is pretty obvious that Bobby had some mental illness that continued to get worse as he aged and it is sad see how it affected everyone around him and of course Bobby most of all. His demands were ridiculous and over the top and frankly I'm shocked Spasky put up with it. I think many of the people involved in making the match happen deserve a lot of credit for actually getting it done and nobody deserves more credit than Spasky in my opinion. He comes across as a total gentleman. I listened to the audio version and thought Sam Tsoutsouvas did a very good job with the narration.