Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #386563 in Books
• Published on: 1990-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 435 pages

Customer Reviews

A wide-eyed, breathless biography
I bought the first edition of this book by mail order when I was about 16, and devoured it eagerly. In those days world-class chess was relentlessly dominated by the USSR, challenged mainly by other Eastern Europeans and the occasional American like Reshevsky, Evans and the Byrne brothers. Boris Spassky was soon to play "iron Tigran" Petrosian for the world title, and the only wild card seemed to be a crazy teenage genius from New York who could beat anyone at all on his day. Frank Brady's writing captured the sheer excitement of it all. For instance, in a great tournament with most of the best players in the world, Mikhail Tal expected Petrosian to crush the upstart Fischer, "but when Bobby beat the USSR champion the crowd roared".

Brady's style is journalistic - and American journalism at that. It will rub many Britishers the wrong way, but it fits his subject. This much expanded edition takes Fischer's story all the way to winning the world championship, which is probably a logical place to stop. The book is full of interesting facts that you could not read about anywhere else, and until a professional biographer turns his attention to Fischer - which may never happen, because he is about the least willing subject imaginable - it will remain the last word.

The games section is quite a different story. Only a narrow cross section are given, with notes by Brady that reveal his lack of expertise. They are only there for completeness' sake, and should be read as an extension of the biography. If you want to understand Fischer's chess, read his Collected Games, his own "My 60 Memorable Games" (which is itself very limited in scope, though superb in depth), or Elie Agur's brilliant "Bobby Fischer: His Approach to Chess".

A good biography, but bad game collection
If 10 points will be given to a book, I will give 5 points to the biography part. For the game collection part, I just give 1 point. It's nothing but a printout of a game record. Almost all the games don't have analysis. You can't improve your skill from this book. I suggest the publisher split the book to two parts so that we can just spend 5$ to buy the biography part.

A very entertaining account of a very important man's life.
Fischer's response to the author's request for chess lessons is worth the price of the book: ...."sure, for the first lesson I want you to play through every column of MODERN CHESS OPENINGS, including footnotes. For the next lesson.... i want you to do it again!"