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King's Gambit: A Son, A Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game
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About King's Gambit: A Son, A Father, And The World's
Product Description As a young man, Paul Hoffman was a brilliant chess player . . . until the pressures of competition drove him to the brink of madness. In King's Gambit, he interweaves a gripping overview of the history of the game and an in-depth look at the state of modern chess into the story of his own attempt to get his game back up to master level -- without losing his mind. It's also a father and son story, as Hoffman grapples with the bizarre legacy of his own dad, who haunts Hoffman's game and life. From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Hoffman's masterful, exhaustive tale of chess, its soaring triumphs and crushing discontents is filled with enough international intrigue and warped, shady characters to pass for the latest James Bond sequel. Along with the stereotypical lunatic Russian grandmasters (the normally even-keeled Russian asked that his chair be X-rayed and dismantled to make sure [Bobby] Fischer hadn't implanted a harmful radiation emitter inside it), chess-crazed Bulgarians, Canadians, Libyans and the occasional American plow through the contemporary chess world in search of victory. In clear, thoughtful prose, Hoffman ( The Man Who Loved Only Numbers) describes the players—([Short] doesn't glare at his adversary, slam down the rooks, twist the knights into the board, rock back and forth, tap his feet or pace the tournament hall snorting like a feral animal) and the game ( On the seventeenth move, Vaganian made an impressive rook sacrifice to break up the advanced pawns in front of Joel's king and launch an attack). Hoffman's only misstep is to set the whole enterprise up as his own father-and-son conflict, a sticky memoir structure that detracts from the built-in appeal of the larger story. Otherwise, Hoffman has achieved something singular; a winning, book about the royal game that will satisfy the general reader, kibitzer and grandmaster alike. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Review "If you enjoy playing chess, this will be the most fascinating, best-written book that you have ever read. If you have no interest in chess, then get ready to enjoy a fascinating, fast-moving story with unforgettable characters many of whom just happen to be chess players." -- Jared Diamond From the Publisher As a child, Paul Hoffman lost himself in chess. The award-winning author of the international bestseller The Man Who Loved Only Numbers played to escape the dissolution of his parents marriage, happily passing weekends with his brilliant bohemian father in New Yorks Greenwich Village, the epicenter of American chess. But he soon learned that such single-minded focus came at a steep price, as the pressure of competition drove him to the edge of madness. As an adolescent, Hoffman loved the artistic purity of the game -- and the euphoria he felt after a hard-fought victory -- but he was disturbed by the ugly brutality and deceptive impulses that tournament chess invariably brought out in his opponents and in himself. Plagued by strange dreams in which attractive women moved like knights and sinister men like bishops, he finally gave up the game entirely in college, for the next twenty-five years. In Kings Gambit, Hoffman interweaves gripping tales from the history of the game and revealing portraits of contemporary chess geniuses into the emotionally charged story of his own recent attempt to get back into tournament chess as an adult -- this time without losing his mind or his humanity. All the while, he grapples with the bizarre, confusing legacy of his own father, who haunts Hoffmans game and life. In this insiders look at the obsessive subculture of championship chess, the critically acclaimed author applies the techniques that garnered his earlier work such lavish praise -- the novelistic storytelling and the keen insights -- to his own life and the eccentric, often mysterious lives of the chess pros he knew and has come to
