Mostly He Won

The 1972 world championship chess match between Bobby Fischer of the United States and Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union was an event of international importance—and a media bonanza. Fischer himself was a singular character study, and the circumstances of the match in Iceland led to bizarre complications. 


The New Yorker writer Jeremy Bernstein came to Reykjavik to report on these affairs—but via a circuitous route that featured William Shawn, the New Yorker’s editor; Arthur C. Clarke, the renowned writer of science fiction; Stanley Kubrick, the famed filmmaker; and Playboy magazine. 


Out of this heady mix, Bernstein fashions a tale of large personalities involved in an intense, brainy competition. 


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For nearly three decades Jeremy Bernstein was a staff writer for the New Yorker. Many of his pieces were prizewinners, and his book Einstein was nominated for the National Book Award. Mr. Bernstein, a theoretical physicist, has also written Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma; Hitler’s Uranium Club; Three Degrees Above Zero; Cranks, Quarks, and the Cosmos; The Merely Personal; and The Dawning of the Raj. He lives in New York City and Aspen, Colorado.