Bobby Fischer Goes to War: The True Story of How the Soviets Lost t
Written by David Edmonds and John Eidinow
Narrated by Sam Tsoutsouvas
4/5
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About this audiobook
In the summer of 1972, with a presidential crisis stirring in the United States and the cold war at a pivotal point, two men -- the Soviet world chess champion Boris Spassky and his American challenger Bobby Fischer -- met in the most notorious chess match of all time. Their showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, held the world spellbound for two months with reports of psychological warfare, ultimatums, political intrigue, cliffhangers, and farce to rival a Marx Brothers film.
Thirty years later, David Edmonds and John Eidinow, authors of the national bestseller Wittgenstein's Poker, have set out to reexamine the story we recollect as the quintessential cold war clash between a lone American star and the Soviet chess machine -- a machine that had delivered the world title to the Kremlin for decades. Drawing upon unpublished Soviet and U.S. records, the authors reconstruct the full and incredible saga, one far more poignant and layered than hitherto believed.
Against the backdrop of superpower politics, the authors recount the careers and personalities of Boris Spassky, the product of Stalin's imperium, and Bobby Fischer, a child of post-World War II America, an era of economic boom at home and communist containment abroad. The two men had nothing in common but their gift for chess, and the disparity of their outlook and values conditioned the struggle over the board.
Then there was the match itself, which produced both creative masterpieces and some of the most improbable gaffes in chess history. And finally, there was the dramatic and protracted off-the-board battle -- in corridors and foyers, in back rooms and hotel suites, in Moscow offices and in the White House.
The authors chronicle how Fischer, a manipulative, dysfunctional genius, risked all to seize control of the contest as the organizers maneuvered frantically to save it -- under the eyes of the world's press. They can now tell the inside story of Moscow's response, and the bitter tensions within the Soviet camp as the anxious and frustrated apparatchiks strove to prop up Boris Spassky, the most un-Soviet of their champions -- fun-loving, sensitive, and a free spirit. Edmonds and Eidinow follow this careering, behind-the-scenes confrontation to its climax: a clash that displayed the cultural differences between the dynamic, media-savvy representatives of the West and the baffled, impotent Soviets. Try as they might, even the KGB couldn't help.
A mesmerizing narrative of brilliance and triumph, hubris and despair, Bobby Fischer Goes to War is a biting deconstruction of the Bobby Fischer myth, a nuanced study on the art of brinkmanship, and a revelatory cold war tragicomedy.
David Edmonds
David Edmonds is an award-winning journalists with the BBC. He's the bestselling authors of Bobby Fischer Goes to War and Wittgenstein’s Poker.
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Reviews for Bobby Fischer Goes to War
143 ratings13 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5If YOU don’t love chess, then that’s a YOU problem. -WSDB
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chances are, if you know anything about chess history, you've heard about this match, where the lone American star triumphs over the big Soviet chess machine to take the world championship. Fischer has his advocates as the best player ever, as well, and this was his crowning moment, the apex of his career. It's definitely important.Here, though, it seems that the received story doesn't get the full picture, and that's the point of the book: to draw out the rest of the details and reframe the story, as many history books aim to do. In this case, it's not just an intellectual exercise, as the availability of documents and interviews with people from the Soviet side, along with Freedom of Information Act documents for the American, really does add a lot to the story, and does make it come across differently. I knew Fischer was nuts, but I didn't realize to what degree; Spassky, the champ, turned out to be a lot more complex, thoughtful, and interesting than I thought. He viewed himself as a Russian, and not a Soviet, patriot, and the implication that has on the course of the process were surprising for me.So while the basic story was familiar, a lot of the details, and thus the implications, were different, and I enjoyed that. On the minus side, I think they should have at least included the games in an appendix or such, if not in the main text; I realize it wasn't part of the story they were telling, exactly, but they go into enough detail, I'd have liked to see what was going on. Also, while they talk about a lot of the geopolitical stuff and the ramifications of all the hoopla and building of the match and such, it's not always well-organized, and so it feels a bit scattershot sometimes.It's still a fast and interesting read, though, with a lot of interesting characters and insight into how the heights of the chess world work. If you're into chess, you'll probably enjoy it. If not, it'll probably never occur to you to try, anyway. It's a self-selecting book that way.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5outstanding audio. The narrator got all the Russian names correct. That in itself is worth listening to the whole 11 hours.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Audiobook: 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.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Bobby Fischer Goes to War (2004) is fairly boring. Bobby Fischer is an unsympathetic main character and the chess match wasn't hugely exciting. The amount of detail is over the top, most of dealing with Bobby's strange requests and the chaos it creates to the point of being funny. Ultimately the raw material the author had to work with didn't really interest. It did remind me of playing chess long ago, when it was fashionable, before computers ruined everything.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Eight years before the Miracle on Ice in Lake Placid, there was a miracle on the island of Iceland, played out on a wooden board with sixty-four squares and thirty-two pieces. It was the chess world championships – which had been dominated throughout the 20th Century by the Soviet Union. And they were beaten by a young man from New York. However, the Spassky vs. Fischer world championship had even more drama behind the scenes that there was on the board. Intertwined with the Cold War and Fischer’s own need for control, the match itself was in jeopardy from start to finish. Bobby Fischer Goes to War is really about the behind-the-scenes confrontations that surrounded the match. Edmonds and Eidinow leave analysis of the actual games to hundreds of other books and focus their efforts on understanding the numerous sideshows. With thirty years of distance, they put things into a proper context and provide deep analysis of these weeks in history where a chess match overshadowed Presidential election coverage and the Olympics. The one weakness of Bobby Fischer Goes to War is that it is mostly isolated on that one tournament, so it leaves the reader a lot of questions about where these two men came from and what became of them afterwards. Still, for those who have an interest in the most infamous chess match of all time and want to know the facts from the legends, Bobby Fischer Goes to War delivers a definitive guide.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The most monumental chess match in the modern era. Fischer vs. Spassky changed popular culture and ignited a "chess boom" in the United States. It was partly played out on the gameboard of politics. It also pitted two wildly different personalities in the elegant but somwhat lazy champion Spassky, and the crude but driven challenger Fischer. Fascinating for even the non chess playing reader. This is not an annotation of games, but a multifaceted reporting of events.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You do not have to be a chess fan to enjoy this book. My knowledge of chess is limited to the names of the pieces and the moves they are allowed to make. So while much of the detail of the games was over my head, the intrege of the cold war story and the glimpse into the mind of a brillient but troubled soul was fascinating and well worth the read
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While I've enjoyed chess since I was a child, knew the top players for years, and fancied myself someday becoming like them, I knew nothing of the titanic struggle that is described in this book. Recommended by a friend, I was totally absorbed by the overall narrative as well as Fischer's bizarre antics and gamesmanship. This is a highly entertaining and interesting look into a time when a chess match became far more than a chess match (and I don't believe you have to like chess in order to enjoy this book).
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chances are, if you know anything about chess history, you've heard about this match, where the lone American star triumphs over the big Soviet chess machine to take the world championship. Fischer has his advocates as the best player ever, as well, and this was his crowning moment, the apex of his career. It's definitely important.Here, though, it seems that the received story doesn't get the full picture, and that's the point of the book: to draw out the rest of the details and reframe the story, as many history books aim to do. In this case, it's not just an intellectual exercise, as the availability of documents and interviews with people from the Soviet side, along with Freedom of Information Act documents for the American, really does add a lot to the story, and does make it come across differently. I knew Fischer was nuts, but I didn't realize to what degree; Spassky, the champ, turned out to be a lot more complex, thoughtful, and interesting than I thought. He viewed himself as a Russian, and not a Soviet, patriot, and the implication that has on the course of the process were surprising for me.So while the basic story was familiar, a lot of the details, and thus the implications, were different, and I enjoyed that. On the minus side, I think they should have at least included the games in an appendix or such, if not in the main text; I realize it wasn't part of the story they were telling, exactly, but they go into enough detail, I'd have liked to see what was going on. Also, while they talk about a lot of the geopolitical stuff and the ramifications of all the hoopla and building of the match and such, it's not always well-organized, and so it feels a bit scattershot sometimes.It's still a fast and interesting read, though, with a lot of interesting characters and insight into how the heights of the chess world work. If you're into chess, you'll probably enjoy it. If not, it'll probably never occur to you to try, anyway. It's a self-selecting book that way.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5To be honest, I have found this book a little bit of a let down.If you are a regular reader here you will know that I have recently resurrected my interest in the game of Chess and this famous World Championship match seemed to be the perfect way to supplement my expanding and widening interest in all facets of the game.But, as I said, I have been disappointed. I found the author to have a plodding, disjointed writing style that doesn’t lend itself well to what is a historic match. Instead of distributing the entertainment evenly throughout he some how manages to take away any excitement that could have been had all together.I know you may be asking ‘How can a Chess match possibly be exciting?’ and I will give you an example of how I think the author gets it wrong. The apparent KGB involvement is hardly mentioned until the very end of the book. Instead of distributing this in relevant places throughout the story, this information is kept for the final chapters as a kind of post-mortem. Maybe it is just me and this really is a great read, but I found it rather dry and lacking in the kind of substance that would have had me plowing through it.I am sure that there are books about this historic event that include a move by move account of the games but it’s a cardinal sin, in my opinion, that none of this was included, not even the key games.All in all a big disappointment.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Read Early 2008 - Shortly after Fischer's death in early 2008, I was motivated to read this book. I remembered the news reports I heard as a child, but didn't really understand the larger context. There was plenty of context supplied here, but I personally would have liked more focus on the chess games themselves. Still, it held some interest.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The cold war played out on a chess board. Fascinating