Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall -- from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness
by Frank Brady
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 ten years old and shared with him some of his most dramatic triumphs, could have written this book. Drawing from Fischer family archives, recently released FBI files, and Bobby's own e-mails, 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.
Possessing a 181 IQ and remarkable powers of concentration, Bobby was only thirteen when he became the youngest chess master in U.S. history. But his strange behavior nearly halted his Cold War championship match with Soviet star Boris Spassky, he turned down millions of dollars in sponshorship offers, and by 1992 he was an international fugitive, wanted by American law enforcement for having violated U.S. sanctions.
Woven into Fischer's late-life odyssey are bizarre flirtations with apocalyptic religions, Nazis, and mafiosi, and bouts of paranoia that had him traveling with gun-toting bodyquards and railing against perceived conspiracies.
Who was Bobby Fischer, and what does his life say about the flowering of genius and the distorting effects of fame? In Endgame, Frank Brady gives us the fascinating answer.
About the author: Frank Brady is internationlly recognized as the person most knowledgeable about the life and career of Bobby Fischer. He is the author of numerous critically acclaimed biographies, including Citizen Wells; Onassis: An Extravagant Life; and Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy (the first edition of which appeard in the mid-1960s and focuses on the young Bobby).
~I received a complimentary copy of this book from Random House. Watch for my review in February 2011.~
Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall - from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness
Publisher/Publication Date: Crown, Feb 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-46390-6
416 pages
