Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Endgame Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall— From America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Mad Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall — from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness. Endgame is acclaimed biographer Frank Brady’s decades-in-the-making tracing of the meteoric ascent — and confounding descent — of enigmatic genius Bobby Fischer. Only Brady, who met Fischer when the prodigy was only 10 and shared with him some of his most dramatic triumphs, could have written this book, which has much to say about the nature of American celebrity and the distorting effects of fame. Drawing from Fischer family archives, recently released FBI files, and Bobby’s own emails, this account is unique in that it limns Fischer’s entire life — an odyssey that took the Brooklyn-raised chess champion from an impoverished childhood to the covers of Time, Life and Newsweek to recognition as “the most famous man in the world” to notorious recluse. At first all one noticed was how gifted Fischer was. Possessing a 181 I. Q. and remarkable powers of concentration, Bobby memorized hundreds of chess books in several languages, and he was only 13 when he became the youngest chess master in U. S. history. But his strange behavior started early. In 1972, at the historic Cold War showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he faced Soviet champion Boris Spassky, Fischer made headlines with hundreds of petty demands that nearly ended the competition. It was merely a prelude to what was to come. Arriving back in the United States to a hero’s welcome, Bobby was mobbed wherever he went — a figure as exotic and improbable as any American pop culture had yet produced. No player of a mere “board game” had ever ascended to such heights. Commercial sponsorship offers poured in, ultimately topping $10 million — but Bobby demurred. Instead, he began tithing his limited money to an apocalyptic religion and devouring anti-Semitic literature. After years of poverty and a stint living on Los Angeles’ Skid Row, Bobby remerged in 1992 to play Spassky in a multi-million dollar rematch — but the experience only deepened a paranoia that had formed years earlier when he came to believe that the Soviets wanted him dead for taking away “their” title. When the dust settled, Bobby was a wanted man — transformed into an international fugitive because of his decision to play in Montenegro despite U. S. sanctions. Fearing for his life, traveling with bodyguards, and wearing a long leather coat to ward off knife attacks, Bobby lived the life of a celebrity fugitive — one drawn increasingly to the bizarre. Mafiosi, Nazis, odd attempts to breed an heir who could perpetuate his chess-genius DNA — all are woven into his late-life tapestry. And yet, as Brady shows, the most notable irony of Bobby Fischer’s strange descent — which had reached full plummet by 2005 when he turned down yet another multi-million dollar payday — is that despite his incomprehensible behavior, there were many who remained fiercely loyal to him. Why that was so is at least partly the subject of this book — one that at last answers the question: “Who was Bobby Fischer?” Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall. Your key to fresh ideas, precise analyses and targeted training! Everyone uses ChessBase, from the World Champion to the amateur next door. It is the program of choice for anyone who loves the game and wants to know more about it. Start your personal success story with ChessBase and enjoy the game even more. Still no ChessBase Account? learn more > 8 million games online! Updated weekly, our definitive database has all the latest games. With Live Book and Let’s Check! 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Still no ChessBase Account? learn more > The ultimate chess experience every day, PlayChess.com welcomes 20,000 chess players from all around the world – from beginner to grandmaster. ONLINE SHOP. The London System with 2.Bf4. "Simple yet aggressive!" Enjoy this new exciting DVD by Simon Williams. Let the famouns Grandmaster from England show you how to gain a very exciting yet well founded opening game with the London System (1.d4 d5 2.Bf4). Off the Shelf. Book Review by Sean Marsh. ENDGAME – Bobby Fischer’s Remarkable Rise and Fall – from America’s Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness By Frank Brady 402 pages (Hardback) RRP £17.99 (CHESS subscribers £16.20) Everyone has heard of Bobby Fischer. His name, fame and infamy have all found their way into the public consciousness and even people who have never picked up a chess piece in their lives have acquired some basic knowledge of the 11th World Chess Champion. For various reasons, the first Fischer-Spassky match garnered chess major headlines around the world and brought about a chess boom. My own first chess set was presented to me in Christmas 1972. It seems incredible that a chess player who last played competitively nearly 40 years ago (apart from a brief comeback, already almost 20 years ago) should still have new books devoted to his life, replete with new stories and information. Yet the very fact that Frank Brady’s new biography requires a subtitle of no fewer than 15 words is telling: Bobby Fischer was a very complex character with an unusually difficult life. Some questions seem unlikely ever to receive fully satisfactory answers. As the author puts it, ‘Paradoxes abound’. Recently Garry Kasparov visited the Marshall Chess Club, where Dr. Frank Brady showed him the board used in the famous teletype match which Bobby played in 1965 in Havana. Frank Brady plays an informal game against entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Andreas Thiel, who was instrumental in founding or promoting companies like PayPal, Facebook and LinkedIn. The aim of the book is clear enough: ‘As someone who knew Bobby Fischer from the time he was quite young, I’ve been asked hundreds of times, ‘‘What was Bobby Fischer really like?’’. This book is an attempt to answer that question.’ Frank Brady certainly has the credentials to write such a book. His earlier Fischer biography, Profile of a Prodigy, was a standard work for years (and is still available, from Chess &?Bridge) and has first hand knowledge too, although his personal involvement is played down: ‘Although Endgame includes many incidents to which I was eyewitness or in which I participated, the book is not in any way my memoir, and I’ve tried to remain invisible as much as possible’. The story of Fischer’s rise and fall is told in 15 chapters. There’s a good selection of photos in the centre of the book and quite a few of them were new to me, including one showing his mother visiting him during the 1972 World Championship match. I learned a lot that was previously unknown to me despite many years of reading numerous works on the great champion. Here’s a few snippets from each of the chapters. Loneliness to Passion. The first chapter starts with Fischer’s brutal arrest in Japan in 2004, before flashing back ‘Forty-eight years earlier’ , to 1956, where a young Bobby is playing a blindfold game against Jack Collins (one of his early chess teachers). Backtracking again, we read about Fischer’s early family life including the familiar story of sister Joan buying their first chess set for $1. Not all of the story is familiar though; already there are snippets which were new to me, including the possibility that the first book of annotated games Fischer read may have been Tarrasch’s Best Games of Chess. A key early test of Fischer’s chess strength came in a simultaneous display by Max Pavey (former champion of Scotland and New York State). Pavey won quickly. ‘Bobby stared at the board for a moment. ‘‘He crushed me’’ he said, to no one in particular. Then he burst into tears’. Defeat didn’t deter him. Chess was already becoming a major part of his life. Childhood Obsession. Aged just seven, Bobby became the youngest member of the Brooklyn Chess Club. The club president, Carmine Nigro, gave him chess lessons and also taught him how to play the accordion. ‘‘I did fairly well on it for a while,’’ Bobby said, looking back, ‘‘but chess had more attraction and the accordion was pushed aside’’. It is tempting to speculate on what sort of path Fischer’s life would have followed if a love of music had forced out the obsession for chess. Out of the Head of Zeus. ‘‘Impossible! Byrne is losing to a 13 year-old nobody’’. Of course, these days every self-respecting teenage chess star has a big collection of grandmaster scalps in their collection. Yet when Fischer played his famous ‘Game of the Century’ against Donald Byrne, it was a highly unusual achievement. Brady does a good job of describing the excitement and surprise generated by the game and avoids the trap of trying to describe the game verbally, blow by blow. By the end of the chapter, Fischer – aged just 14 – was the new United States Chess Champion and his marvellous results and achievements no longer came as a surprise. The American Wunderkind. It seems remarkable that young Fischer and his sister were allowed to travel to Russia, ostensibly to prepare for the forthcoming Interzonal. His ego was in full flow. Once inside the famous Moscow Central Chess Club, he was soon asking, ‘‘When can I play Botvinnik?’’ Disappointed that Botvinnik – and Keres – were not on hand, Fischer eventually settled for a blitz workout against Petrosian, but only after his request for a fee was turned down. ‘You are our guest. and we don’t pay fees to guests'. Brady speculates that Fischer’s mistrust of Russians may have started with what he perceived to be his shabby treatment in Moscow; an early example of Fischer reacting badly when things didn’t go exactly the way he wanted them to. The Cold War Gladiator. This chapter focuses partly on the 1959 Candidates tournament (including Tal’s brilliant 4-0 victory over Fischer) and looks at two key developments in the story. Fischer’s promise to ". teach those dirty Russians a lesson they won’t forget for a long time" had to wait a few more years to come to fruition, but the seeds were already sown. Meanwhile, he had started to listen to religious programmes on the radio. One sermon in particular, by Herbert W. Armstrong, proclaimed God as the only healer and cautioned against the use of medical doctors. This helps to explain Fischer’s refusal to accept medical help for the condition which led to his death many years later. Also around this time, Fischer began carrying a Bible, ‘‘. the most rational, most common-sense book ever written on the face of the earth’’. The New Fischer. 1959 saw a change in Fischer’s dress sense and he became the extremely well-dressed player we know from the most famous photographs. Brady points out that it is still something of a mystery how he could afford bespoke suits at that time. Einstein’s Theory. Fischer was now becoming more involved with the Worldwide Church of God and for once something was as important to him as chess. He commented: ‘‘I split my life in two pieces.’’ Problems emerged, caused mainly by his stubborn streak. An interesting match with Reshevsky was abandoned and Fischer was enraged by the the Soviet ‘pact’ at the Curaçao Candidates’ tournament. His complaints led to a reform in the system. Legends Clash. This chapter describes Fischer’s famous Olympiad game with Botvinnik (their only meeting) in which the latter escaped with a draw from what had looked a likely defeat. Fischer was absorbing fuel from such events to boost his anti-Soviet theories. He had apparently given up on the World Championship cycle but was capable of producing astonishing results, such as his 11-0 score in the 1963-4 US Championship. The Candidate. 1969 brought the publication of his classic book, My Sixty Memorable Games. Even this outwardly straightforward venture had an unusual motive. Fischer delayed publication but then relented. Larry Evans gave the reason behind the change of mind: ‘‘He was feeling depressed about the world and thought there was an excellent chance that there would be a nuclear holocaust soon. He felt he should enjoy whatever money he could get before it was too late’’. It was a difficult and mixed period for Fischer, which saw his withdrawal from the Sousse Interzonal (which he was leading), a break from chess for 18 months and an eventual comeback in the USSR v Rest of the World match, followed by his demolition of three candidates on his way to a showdown with World Champion Boris Spassky. Brady doesn’t dwell too much on the the purely chess aspect of events. For example, the Candidates matches are dealt with in a few short pages and there is very little on the games themselves. This is no bad thing; it makes the book much more accessible to those who want to learn more about Bobby Fischer the person and not how he played the Najdorf. The Champion. Although the story of the 1972 title match with Spassky contains much that is already very well known, there are little snippets to keep the chapter fresh. One example sees Fischer chatting to Sam Sloan and Bernard Zuckerman, two of his close friends at the time. He was worried by the prospect of facing the World Champion.‘‘Spassky is better’’ said Bobby, somewhat woefully. ‘‘Not much better, but better’’. The Wilderness Years. With the world at his feet and many big money plans in the pipeline, Fischer unexpectedly drops off the chess map. His wilderness years are surely stranger than any period of time in the life of any chess player. This chapter is replete with stories of him turning down huge sums of money and of his descent from being such an elegant, popular figure, with fame across the globe, to a strange recluse. The chapter starts with Fischer quoted as saying: ‘‘I want to meet girls. vivacious girls with big breasts’’ and ends with freelance photographers trying – unsuccessfully – to track him down, despite being willing to offer $5,000 for a successful lead. It is one of the most interesting chapters in the book and sheds some welcome light on this extraordinary period of time. It’s easily the best account of this period I have read. Fischer-Spassky Redux. It is astounding that a person can return from the wilderness after 20 years and suddenly be on the front pages of newspapers around the world once again. The Fischer-Spassky rematch of 1992 was a curious affair. How could it be that 17-year-old Zita Rajcsanyi succeeded in kickstarting Fischer’s return to the chessboard when the rest of the world had consistently failed? Brady gives a very good account of the early correspondence and developing relationship which led to the return. The match itself was a mixed one in terms of chess, and Spassky admitted he was more concerned with bringing his friend back to chess than the result. Crossing Borders. Rather than heralding a proper comeback, the 1992 match proved to be Fischer’s last known games of chess. This chapter covers the period of time after the match, which saw Fischer develop his theories regarding Kasparov and Karpov fixing their games and the infamous radio interviews in which he was allowed to air his hatred of jews and the USA. It’s tragic stuff and Brady makes no excuses for any of it. Arrest and Rescue. The penultimate chapter brings the book full circle, with an examination of Fischer’s arrest in Japan. Remarkably, another full circle was brought about, with Fischer relocating to Iceland. As Brady points out, despite the nostalgic connection, that there was very little choice. Nine other countries refused to take him. Bobby Fischer, the great chess champion, was approaching a very difficult endgame of his own making. His anti- Semitic, anti-US outbursts and beliefs were very much working against him. Living and Dying in Iceland. The final chapter makes difficult reading. Caught between his desire for total anonymity and feelings of disappointment when people don’t recognise him, he spends most of his time avoiding people and seeking refuge in books. His life starts to ebb away as he refuses medical treatment for a kidney problem. The end, when it comes, is a terrible and painful one. One of the final quotes is surprising and seems completely un-Fischer like: ‘‘Nothing soothes as much as the human touch.’’ And soon afterwards, like a ferocious storm which has finally burnt itself out, Fischer is gone from the world, aged just 64. Except, of course, with Fischer the story just rumbles on. In his Epilogue, Brady covers the exhumation and DNA test required to settle the dispute over his financial legacy. Readers more interested in the purely chess side of his story should stick with Karsten Müller’s acclaimed Bobby Fischer: The Career and Complete Games of the American World Chess Champion (Russell Enterprises, 2009). However, Endgame should now be regarded as the definitive version of Bobby Fischer’s life and death and it is unlikely to be superseded anytime soon. Frank Brady has produced a very accessible volume which genuinely tries to explain and help the reader understand the incredible life of the most enigmatic and intriguing of all chess champions. CHESS is mailed to subscribers in over 50 countries. You can subscribe from Europe and Asia at a specially discounted rate for first timers here or from North America here . "Endgame": The genius and madness of Bobby Fischer. How did one of the greatest chess players of all time end up a paranoid, hate-filled old man? By Laura Miller. Published January 30, 2011 9:01PM (EST) Shares. The life of Bobby Fischer was a compendium of secrets and puzzles from the very beginning. Who was the biological father of the 11th World Chess Champion, possibly the greatest player of all time, and certainly among the top five? Why did he retire from the game after winning his historic match with Boris Spassky in 1972 and refrain from playing publicly for 20 years? What was he doing during those two decades? Why did he espouse a venomous anti-Semitism despite being Jewish himself as well as close to and reliant upon many Jewish friends? Why did those friends put up with him and why, over and over again, did they run to his aid, when his behavior toward them was often contemptuous? And, above all, was he insane and, if so, did his genius have some connection to his madness? Frank Brady's "Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall -- From America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness," cannot answer these questions conclusively, but it presents Fischer's story with an almost Olympian evenhandedness that ends up making it far more absorbing than any sensationalized account. Brady knew Fischer as a child, as Fischer was emerging as a chess prodigy in New York City, but the author renders himself almost invisible in this book. The cloud of chaos and ire that Fischer walked around in all his life doesn't seem to have infected his biographer at all. It should be said upfront that "Endgame" contains no detailed accounts of chess games or moves, and can be read and understood even by those who don't play at all. (My most recent game was with a 6-year-old; we were evenly matched, given that he'd just learned the rules and I could barely remember them.) The book may, perhaps, leave chess aficionados unsatisfied on that account, but this decision makes "Endgame" intelligible to anyone interested in the human aspect of Fischer's life and career. Among the misperceptions Brady aims to correct is the prevalent belief that Fischer was neglected or unloved by his mother, Regina, a brilliant, Swiss-born American who married a German biophysicist while studying medicine in Moscow. Bobby was born in Chicago, at a point after his mother had separated from his legal father, who was living in Latin America and unable to enter the U.S. due to his Communist ties. There are goods reasons to believe that Bobby's biological father was a Hungarian Jewish physicist (and refugee from Nazi Germany), Paul Nemenyi. Brady offers many instances in which Regina supported and provided for her son throughout his life (including signing over her Social Security checks to him during his 20 years of reclusion), pointing out that most of the privations and loneliness of Bobby's childhood arose from the fact that the family was very poor and Regina a working single mother. She did allow Bobby to travel alone to chess matches when he was a young as 9, and when she moved overseas to resume her medical studies, she left the 16-year-old boy to live alone in the family's Brooklyn, N.Y., apartment. However, given her son's unquenchable obsession with the game and general disregard for adult authority, she probably felt she had little choice in such matters. As far as Brady is concerned, the relationship between mother and son was always loving. However, if Bobby suffered from a genetically rooted mental disorder, chances are he got it from Regina. She went through a brief period of disorganization and near-vagrancy at the time he was born, an episode ominously echoed by the years Bobby spent living in flophouses and shambling around Pasadena, Calif., after the 1972 match with Spassky. Whoever his biological father was, Bobby also inherited a highly specialized and often volatile intelligence that would also make him the youngest American to attain the rank of chessmaster at 14 -- and at 15, the youngest international grandmaster to that date. The qualities contributing to these triumphs were Fischer's ferocious capacity for total focus on chess, his highly competitive personality and his phenomenal memory. In his youth, he lived, breathed and ate chess -- literally: Brady recounts that the pieces of his personal set became encrusted with crumbs and other food, and Fischer jokingly complained when the admirer who bought the set as a keepsake cleaned them. His mother often worried that he was neglecting his schoolwork (not to mention his social life), and at one point insisted on conducting all their domestic conversations in Spanish until he improved enough to do well on a language exam. Fischer's outside interests never did him much good, however. He seems to have had little use for romance and sex (until, late in life, he became preoccupied with the need to reproduce his own genius), and his more profound ruminations led him first to embrace an evangelical church run by a radio preacher, then to dabble in a series of faiths. His final spiritual flirtation before his death in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2008, was with Roman Catholicism, but he also considered the philosophy of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, always adopting a one-foot-in/one-foot-out stance toward the rules and proscriptions of any given creed. One of the few constants in Fischer's life -- besides chess, that is -- was his anti-Semitism, a bizarrely capricious version of the prejudice that absolved anyone he considered a "good person" (whatever their faith or ethnic background) and labeled anyone he disliked or distrusted a "Jew," again without regard to their religion or background. He was also convinced, at various points in his life, that the USSR and the U.S. government were plotting to assassinate him. Although many of Fischer's anxieties sound delusional, he was that rare paranoid whom many people are genuinely out to get. His complaints, early in his career, that Soviet chess players were colluding to maintain their nation's dominance of the world's championship turned out to be well- founded. At the height of his rivalry with the Soviet players, a secret chess lab was even set up in Russia to suss out his game and devise ways to thwart him. Due to his mother's leftist activism and his own visit to Moscow as a teenage prodigy, the family's phone was tapped, their associates questioned and their lives monitored by the FBI. The U.S. government's animus toward Fischer began with his rematch with Spassky in 1992, an event sponsored by a Serbian propagandist. By participating, Fischer was in violation of American sanctions against Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia. He had been refusing to pay income taxes for years, in retaliation for a lawsuit that went against him in an American court. This hadn't been a problem during the 1980s, when he was mostly broke, and U.S. officials might even have been willing to shrug off the sanctions violations, but in the 2000s, Fischer made dozens of appalling anti- American and anti-Semitic broadcasts from a small radio station in Japan, where he was living. These got onto the Internet, and in particular the ones made directly after 9/11 may have provoked the U.S. to step up its efforts to chastise him. Fischer became in effect a man without a country, living in Eastern Europe and Asia, until he was arrested for a passport violation while entering Japan and detained there for months as his fate was disputed. Finally, Iceland agreed to offer Fischer citizenship in 2005 and he spent the last three years of his life there. He died of kidney failure at 64, refusing dialysis because he mistrusted doctors and conventional medicine. Just how crazy was Bobby Fischer? Those best qualified to judge, such as the psychiatrist friend who kept him company in his final days, insisted he was not schizophrenic or psychotic; he didn't hallucinate or lose touch with reality. However, he clearly wasn't mentally healthy. The intensity of his attention to chess was certainly compulsive, and it unbalanced his life in addition to making him one of the game's greatest players. But Fischer's celebrity seems to have done him more damage than anything else. It fueled the grandiosity that lies at the heart of all paranoia and it turned him into an imperious diva who inflicted ridiculous demands -- that a hotel raise the level of his toilet seat by exactly 1 inch, for example, or that he be paid outlandish fees just to discuss the possibility of a high-profile match -- apparently for the sake of exercising arbitrary power. People tolerated treatment from him they would not have suffered from anyone else, which surely didn't help with his difficulty perceiving limits. The world loved Bobby Fischer for his genius and his charisma, and too much of it forgave him too easily for his hateful, crackpot diatribes. But for all that it adored him, it didn't do him any favors. Laura Miller. Laura Miller is the author of "The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia." MORE FROM Laura Miller • FOLLOW magiciansbook • LIKE Laura Miller. Endgame. Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness. 4.5 • 42 Ratings $13.99. $13.99. Publisher Description. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Who was Bobby Fischer? In this “nuanced perspective of the chess genius” ( Los Angeles Times ), an acclaimed biographer chronicles his meteoric rise and confounding fall, with an afterword containing newly discovered details about Fischer’s life. Possessing an IQ of 181 and remarkable powers of concentration, Bobby Fischer memorized hundreds of chess books in several languages, and he was only thirteen when he became the youngest chess master in U.S. history. But his strange behavior started early. In 1972, at the historic Cold War showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he faced Soviet champion Boris Spassky, Fischer made headlines with hundreds of petty demands that nearly ended the competition. It was merely a prelude to what was to come. Arriving back in the United States to a hero’s welcome, Bobby was mobbed wherever he went—a figure as exotic and improbable as any American pop culture had yet produced. Commercial sponsorship offers poured in, ultimately topping $10 million—but Bobby demurred. Instead, he began tithing his limited money to an apocalyptic religion and devouring anti-Semitic literature. Bobby reemerged in 1992 to play Spassky in a multi-million dollar rematch—but when the dust settled, he was a wanted man, transformed into an international fugitive because of his decision to play in Montenegro despite U.S. sanctions. Fearing for his life, traveling with bodyguards, Bobby lived the life of a celebrity fugitive—one drawn increasingly to the bizarre. Drawing from Fischer family archives, recently released FBI files, and Bobby’s own emails, Endgame is unique in that it limns Bobby Fischer’s entire life—an odyssey that took the chess champion from an impoverished childhood to the covers of Time, Life and Newsweek to recognition as “the most famous man in the world” to notorious recluse. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY NOV 8, 2010. The Mozart of the chessboard is inseparable from the monster of paranoid egotism in this fascinating biography. Brady (Citizen Welles), founding publisher of Chess Life magazine and a friend of Fischer, gives a richly detailed account of the impoverished Brooklyn wunderkind's sensational opening he was history's first 15-year-old grandmaster and the 1972 match with Boris Spassky, in which Fischer captivated the world with his brilliant play and towering tantrums. Brady's chronicle of Fischer's graceless endgame is just as engrossing, as the chess superstar sinks into poverty after rejecting million-dollar matches; flirts with cults; and becomes, though himself Jewish, a raving anti-Semite and conspiracy theorist. Brady offers an insightful study of Fischer's obsessively honed gifts his evocative description of the 13-year-old prodigy's legendary "Game of the Century," with its seemingly suicidal queen sacrifice, will stir even nonadepts and a clear-eyed, slightly appalled portrait of his growing paranoia. One senses a connection: the pattern-seeking faculties that could discern distant, obscure checkmates went berserk when trained on the chaos of everyday existence, finding in every reversal not random misfortune but the subtle moves of hidden opponents. Brady gives us a vivid, tragic narrative of a life that became a chess game. Photos. Endgame : Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall -- from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness. Endgame is acclaimed biographer Frank Brady's decades-in-the-making tracing of the meteoric ascent--and confounding descent --of enigmatic genius Bobby Fischer. Only Brady, who met Fischer when the prodigy was only 10 and shared with him some of his most dramatic triumphs, could have written this book, which has much to say about the nature of American celebrity and the distorting effects of fame. Drawing from Fischer family archives, recently released FBI files, and Bobby's own emails, this account is unique in that it limns Fischer's entire life--an odyssey that took the Brooklyn-raised chess champion from an impoverished childhood to the covers of Time, Life and Newsweek to recognition as "the most famous man in the world" to notorious recluse. At first all one noticed was how gifted Fischer was. Possessing a 181 I.Q. and remarkable powers of concentration, Bobby memorized hundreds of chess books in several languages, and he was only 13 when he became the youngest chess master in U.S. history. But his strange behavior started early. In 1972, at the historic Cold War showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he faced Soviet champion Boris Spassky, Fischer made headlines with hundreds of petty demands that nearly ended the competition. It was merely a prelude to what was to come. Arriving back in the United States to a hero's welcome, Bobby was mobbed wherever he went--a figure as exotic and improbable as any American pop culture had yet produced. No player of a mere "board game" had ever ascended to such heights. Commercial sponsorship offers poured in, ultimately topping $10 million--but Bobby demurred. Instead, he began tithing his limited money to an apocalyptic religion and devouring anti-Semitic literature. After years of poverty and a stint living on Los Angeles' Skid Row, Bobby remerged in 1992 to play Spassky in a multi-million dollar rematch--but the experience only deepened a paranoia that had formed years earlier when he came to believe that the Soviets wanted him dead for taking away "their" title. When the dust settled, Bobby was a wanted man--transformed into an international fugitive because of his decision to play in Montenegro despite U.S. sanctions. Fearing for his life, traveling with bodyguards, and wearing a long leather coat to ward off knife attacks, Bobby lived the life of a celebrity fugitive - one drawn increasingly to the bizarre. Mafiosi, Nazis, odd attempts to breed an heir who could perpetuate his chess-genius DNA--all are woven into his late-life tapestry. And yet, as Brady shows, the most notable irony of Bobby Fischer's strange descent - which had reached full plummet by 2005 when he turned down yet another multi-million dollar payday--is that despite his incomprehensible behavior, there were many who remained fiercely loyal to him. Why that was so is at least partly the subject of this book--one that at last answers the question: "Who was Bobby Fischer?"