What is so extraordinary about Russians Versus Fischer, though, is the way in which it uses a myriad of till-now confidential documents from the archives of the USSR Chess Federation and the Soviet Sports Committee, many of them dating from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, to tell the story of Fischer’s rise from a Soviet perspective; i.e. from the viewpoint of those who had most to lose from it.
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A review of Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope
I’m not sure why it is better for the author to spoil the plot, than for some purported friend of the reader to do the same! But — if I may be permitted to issue a meta-spoiler, or a spoiler about spoilers — there is no need to worry that Trollope is going to go off the deep end in this respect. You will still find suspense a-plenty.
A review of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Dawkins is such a clear thinking scientist that he manages, through analogy, metaphor, logical argument, and example to make his points with the kind of clarity that religious theologians rarely reach. This book is a joy to read, and never gets dry or terse. Instead Dawkins’ good humour and sense of humanistic pleasure in science and discovery are constantly evident.
A review of The Paris Review Interviews, volume 1
Overall, Gourevitch’s hope that these interviews will stand “if not as definitive portraits of each artist, then as a significant contribution to such an ultimate portrait, with the added fascination that they are in large measure self-portraits” has been, on my reading, largely fulfilled.
A review of Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Eco sustains his fantasy with the skill of a gifted writer, but sometimes he resembles the woman who thinks that she can make it on just sex appeal. The studied pose of a gifted writer can slip and leave great empty places exposed. He will carry you forward with more skill than in his other works, and, magician-like, induce you to read the whole of a long, long book, but the final pages miss the target and he – and his reader – has to content himself with a gestures rather than reality.
A review of All Will Be Revealed by Robert Anthony Siegel
The transformation of both Augustus and Verena forms the stuff of which All Will Be Revealed is made. Siegel is incredibly gifted in narrative ability and speed. His instinct for characterization is flawless and economical. He makes as much and as well of his minor as of his major characters. His performance is deft and sure.
A review of On Opera by Bernard Williams
This book will contribute something to your knowledge of opera but it will not be easy to read. The awkwardness of Williams’s English makes the book unpleasant. It baffles me that a man who obviously had such a love for music could have written so unmusically.
A review of The Aeneid by Virgil
I am not a Latinist but I have over the years immersed myself in Latin texts and have a little knowledge of the problems that Fagles faced. Virgil began The Aeneid in the most striking way he could manage and a line or two from near the opening becomes eminently suitable for comparison of the original with Fagles’s translation.
A review of A Writer’s San Francisco by Eric Maisel
In fact, I haven’t enjoyed a book on writing this much since encountering Stephen King’s On Writing some years ago. When I got to the end of A Writer’s San Francisco, I actually felt compelled to go back to the beginning and reread it immediately, such is its charm and inspirational qualities.
A review of The Search for Chess Perfection II by C. J. S. Purdy
Purdy was a prolific writer, and his writing was of such a consistently high quality, that the selection of instructional articles for inclusion in the book must have presented quite a problem. At any rate, we get a generous sampling…