We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.Įveryone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). Mavens will mourn the dearth of move-by-move analysis, but general readers will savor a marvelous portrait of East against West, with perceived societal superiority as the real prize. In the end it was Spassky who was in psychological shock and the Soviets who claimed (and still maintain) that they were victims of a sinister plot: telepathy, poisoned food, “electronic rays,” anything that would explain their champion’s embarrassing loss. When the magic finally began in game three, Fischer played the brutal, grinding chess that had brought him an unprecedented string of consecutive victories during the two preceding years. Finally goaded by a phone call from Henry Kissinger-Nixon was busy pondering the implications of the recent Watergate break-in-Fischer showed up, played a bad first game and lost, then forfeited the second out of sheer petulance. Spassky’s congeniality and savoir faire charmed the watching world Fischer’s constant carping over playing conditions and his outrageous allegations of conspiracy, including possible assassination, dismayed fans even in the US, but the desperate Icelandic organizers bent to his every whim.

Fischer’s two assistants, one a grandmaster, were primarily gofers and experienced complainers. Spassky got full-time analysis from a whole team of international champions, some of whom had been studying Fischer’s key games for a year, plus a psychologist, a physical trainer, and several KGB operatives traveling under false colors. The authors build to a crescendo with other fascinating details, taking the reader inside the two camps in Reykjavik.

The attention focused on the 1972 Bobby Fischer–Boris Spassky world championship match in Iceland was extraordinary: Edmonds and Eidinow recount that one reporter hit 21 Manhattan bars and found l8 TVs tuned to PBS, which showed a chess pundit posting teletyped moves on a magnetic board, while only three carried a Mets game. The BBC journalists who honed their skills in amassing minutiae with Wittgenstein’s Poker (2001) re-create the furor surrounding a chess match that was also one of the Cold War’s most bizarre confrontations.

Bobby fischer goes to war