Bobby Fischer Goes to War: The True Story of How the Soviets Lost t Audiobook (Free)

In the summertime of 1972, using a presidential crisis stirring in the United States as well as the cold war at a pivotal stage, two guys — the Soviet world chess champion Boris Spassky and his American challenger Bobby Fischer — fulfilled in probably the most notorious chess match of all time. Their showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, kept the world spellbound for two months with reviews of emotional warfare, ultimatums, political intrigue, cliffhangers, and farce to rival a Marx Brothers film.

Thirty years later on, about Bobby Fischer Goes to War: THE REAL Story of How the Soviets Lost t David Edmonds and John Eidinow, authors from the nationwide bestseller Wittgenstein’s Poker, have set out to reexamine the storyplot we recollect as the quintessential cold war clash between a lone American star as well as the Soviet chess machine — a machine that had delivered the world title to the Kremlin for many years. Sketching upon unpublished Soviet and U.S. records, the authors reconstruct the full and amazing saga, one a lot more poignant and split than hitherto thought.

Against the background of superpower politics, the authors recount the careers and personalities of Boris Spassky, the merchandise of Stalin’s imperium, and Bobby Fischer, a kid of post-World War II America, an era of economic increase in the home and communist containment abroad. The two men had nothing in keeping but their gift for chess, as well as the disparity of their outlook and values conditioned the struggle within the board.

Then there is the match itself, which produced both creative masterpieces plus some of the most improbable gaffes in chess history. And lastly, there is the dramatic and protracted off-the-board fight — in corridors and foyers, in back again rooms and hotel suites, in Moscow offices and in the White House.

The authors chronicle how Fischer, a manipulative, dysfunctional genius, risked all to assume control from the contest as the organizers maneuvered frantically to save lots of it — beneath the eyes from the world’s press. They can now tell the inside story of Moscow’s response, as well as the bitter tensions inside the Soviet camp as the anxious and disappointed apparatchiks strove to prop up Boris Spassky, one of the most un-Soviet of their champions — fun-loving, delicate, 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 powerful, media-savvy representatives of the West and the baffled, impotent Soviets. Try as they might, also the KGB couldn’t help.

A mesmerizing narrative of brilliance and triumph, hubris and despair, Bobby Fischer Would go to Battle is a biting deconstruction from the Bobby Fischer myth, a nuanced study within the art of brinkmanship, and a revelatory chilly war tragicomedy.