Endgame

A biography by Brady (communications, Saint John's Univ.) on chess icon Bobby Fischer might seem familiar because Brady wrote the best-selling Profile of a Prodigy: The Life and Games of Bobby Fischer in 1965 (with an update in 1973). A chess aficionado himself, Brady first met Fischer in 1953 when Fischer was a 10-year-old chess prodigy. Profile details Fischer's youth and World Championship match with Boris Spassky. Here Brady aims to decipher Fischer's entire life, both the ascent and the descent, and draws on new information from family archives, FBI files, and personal correspondence. With less chess game analysis, more biography, and some speculative narrative, this book is clearly aimed at a more general audience. Probably still the world's most famous chess genius, Fischer also had a reputation for being difficult, arrogant, and rude and in later life anti-Semitic and anti-American.