Endgame: Bobby Fischer's Remarkable Rise and Fall- from America's Brightest Prodigy to the Edge of Madness
by Frank Brady
from the back: 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 Fischers entire life - an odessey 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.
Posessing a 181 IQ and remarkable powers of concentration, Bobby was only thirteen when he became the youngest chess master in US history. But his strange behavior nearly halted his Cold War championship match with Soviet star Boris Spassky, he turned down millions of dollars in sponsorship offers, and by 1992 he was an international fugitive, wanted by American law enfocrcement for having violated US sanctions.
Woven into Fischer's late-life odysset are bizarre flirtations with apocalyptic religions, Nazis, and mafiosi, and bouts of paranoia that had him traveling with gun-toting bodyguards 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.
my review:
this biography was incredibly interesting to me. i am too young to know anything about bobby fischer from when the main events of the book were taking place, but reading them in this book made them real to me. the author really got inside information and explained the world of competitive chess in a way that made sense to even someone who doesnt know how to play chess (which i do, thanks to my dad and his interest in bobby fischer back in the day) without seeming condescending. if this subject appeals to you in the least i think you will enjoy this book.
for my birthday, which we had off, we decided to paint baby k's room. jeremy went in the morning and bought supplies. After puttying several holes in wall, we left the apartment to run some errands and let the mud dry. jeremy went to guitar center while i availed myself of the services of the nail salon next door. after a pedicure and a new guitar, we went to a great thai place down the street. by the time we got home it was time to paint! 
i taped off the borders and jeremy prepped everything else. he mixed and poured the paint and we got to work. i was able to sit on the floor and paint a large portion of the edges and bottom of the wall while jeremy edged the ceiling.we finished about two hours later in the nick of time. it was time to get cleaned up and head to the hospital for our first of a series of four birthing classes. this one was an intro to everything, a review of a lot of info that we knew, and learning some breathing and relaxation techniques. im thinking that if labor involves this much deep breathing and back massage that it can't possibly be as bad as everyone says! ;)
