As an avid chess player myself, this was a must read. A biography of a complex human, admired and reviled, Endgame : The Remarkable Rise and Fall is as informative as it is an eye opener. It really made me understand more about the man Bobby Fisher. I liked the beginning of the book, which rather unexpectedly confronts the reader with the “downfall” part of the book.
Then, the author takes us back in time to Bobby’s childhood, rise to world fame, and about halfway through the book, Fisher’s wilderness years, coming again full circle with at his downfall. ( )

A fascinating memoir, even if you don't know much about Bobby Fischer or chess. (I've played the game a couple times, but my level of expertise ends at having watched Queen's Gambit on Netflix.)

I just kept thinking, as I read this book, that if Bobby Fischer were 40 years younger, he would have gotten into 4chan and become an MRA, enthusiastically voted for Trump, started a conspiracy theory channel on YouTube, and stormed the capitol on January 6th. Maybe he was just a man ahead of his time. ( )

A sad story. ( )

Many nights when I was a child, I played chess with my father. He gave me a book about the famous (well, in chess circles) 1972 world championship of Fischer and Spassky. Even though he lost, I cheered Spassky on most likely because of the cartoons in the books.

Wandering through the library, I picked up the book on a whim doubting I would ever finish this 300 page behemoth. But with my girls out of town for the holidays, I had the time to read the book. It may not have been the best combination of reading about a lonely, and eventually deranged, man while I had so much time alone myself.

It was a brilliant book. It was a sad book. I thought he disappeared and didn't realize he still made headlines a few years ago becoming America's most famous anti-semite after becoming her most famous chess player.

I do think alone a person can reach great heights, like Bobby Fischer, but without some grounding, a person can easily get lost. ( )

The problem with this biography of one of the world's greatest chess players is that at one point the author just gives up on trying to explain Bobby's wild behavior. After the candidates' matches that bring Bobby the chance to play for the world title, Bobby's behavior becomes completely crazy and we don't really learn why. Perhaps this is understandable, the author of course didn't have access to Bobby during that time (nobody did), but some psychological examination of this period of Bobby's life would make Endgame a more insightful biography.

In addition, there are other minor mistakes which nevertheless cast doubt on author's familiarity with the subjects he's describing. For example, Slovenian resort towns of Bled and Portorož feature prominently in this biography as they were the venues of Bobby's international breakthrough at a very early age. Brady claims that the locals there were oh so impressed with Fischer because he learned to sign his autograph in the native Cyrillic Serbo-Croat, which of course is ridiculous, since that is neither the language nor the writing system used in Slovenia.

The author is also prone to using a lot of rarely used bookish adjectives, so I found the Kindle's built-in dictionary quite helpful.

Other than that, Endgame provides an interesting look into life and career of Bobby Fischer and the world class chess world between 1960 and 1980. Several famous grandmasters from this era and other important chess figures play a prominent role in Bobby's life, but there is not much chess and of course no transcription of Bobby's games (this is a biography after all). A few of Fischer's most important games (such as the famous Game of the Century) are described in prose form (and in a way that even non-chess players can get the gist of it), so avid chess players looking for annotated matches of Bobby Fischer need to find them elsewhere. ( )