White King And Red Queen - How The Cold War Was Dought On The Chessboard

Daniel Johnson -- journalist, editor, scholar, and chess enthusiast who once played Garry Kasparov to a draw in a simultaneous exhibition -- is the perfect guide to one of history‰۪s most remarkable periods, when chess matches were front-page news and captured the world‰۪s imagination.

The Cold War played out in many areas: geopolitical alliances, military coalitions, cat-and-mouse espionage, the arms race, proxy wars -- and chess. An essential pastime of Russian intellectuals and revolutionaries, and later adopted by the Communists as a symbol of Soviet power, chess was inextricably linked to the rise and fall of the ‰ÛÏevil empire.‰۝ This original narrative history recounts in gripping detail the singular part the Immortal Game played in the Cold War. From chess‰۪s role in the Russian Revolution -- Marx, Lenin, and Trotsky were all avid players -- to the 1945 radio match when the Soviets crushed the Americans, prompting Stalin‰۪s telegram ‰ÛÏWell done lads!‰۝; to the epic contest between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in 1972 at the height of d̩tente, when Kissinger told Fischer to ‰ÛÏgo over there and beat the Russians‰۝; to the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, White King and Red Queen takes us on a fascinating tour of the Cold War‰۪s checkered landscape.