Customer Reviews

White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on the Chessboard

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This book takes the novel approach of narrating the history of the Soviet Union and the Cold War as seen through the prism of chess. As such, it's an entertaining and sometimes riveting read that vividly brings to life some of the colorful personalities of the past century, most notably that deeply-troubled genius Bobby Fischer.

The paperback edition gets off to an unpromising start with a preface which includes several paragraphs of the author praising himself through selected reviewers' quotes. This kind of self-aggrandizement is best left to the blurbs one expects to see on the back cover -- and denotes a certain defensiveness on the author's part which is entirely unjustified. This is a good book -- and it can stand on its own merits without such puffery.

Johnson believes that "chess illuminates the process by which Western civilization ultimately triumphed over the gravest threat it had ever encountered." It's a bold, and somewhat hyperbolic claim. There can be no dispute that Soviet-style communism was a great threat to Western civilization -- but was it greater than Nazism and fascism?

Another bold declaration follows: "The Soviet Union excelled at only two things: war and chess." Really? Not ballet, not gymnastics, not space travel? And it's hard to say they excelled at war, given their chaotic performance in the Winter War against Finland and their response to the German invasion of 1941.

Despite his tendency to exaggerate, Johnson does convincingly tell the story of how Lenin and Stalin set out to dominate the chess world after the 1917 revolution -- and how it was intimately connected to the Stalinist Terror and show trials of the 1930s. At the same time, he argues, ordinary Russians flocked to chess as one of the few areas of intellectual activity not censored by the state. Chess, he says, "became the opium of the people."

Johnson provides a fascinating chapter on the role of Jews in chess. Several leading players, including at least two Soviet World Champions, were Jews. They had to navigate treacherous waters in a state always on the edge of launching new anti-Semitic campaigns. We learn the inspiring story of how the renowned dissident Anatoly Sheransky used chess to retain his sanity through long years of imprisonment on trumped up charges -- and how he came to believe he was playing a long game of chess with the Soviet dictator Yuri Andropov. Sheransky emerged victorious, checkmating the entire Soviet Union -- which shortly afterward ceased to exist.

The chapters about Fischer and his classic showdown with Spassky have been told many times before. Johnson has a fine eye for drama and tells the story with considerable elan. He then goes on to describe the lengthy battles between Karpov and Korchnoi and Karpov and Kasparov, attempting to link them to his central thesis. Johnson clearly believes that Vladimir Putin's Russia is the political and intellectual heir to the old repressive Soviet Union, still playing the same games through chess to ensure one-party control and frustrate the emergence of genuine democracy.

It's a bit of a stretch perhaps -- which is the main flaw in an otherwise fine book. Johnson has a great story to tell and tells it well -- but cannot resist the occasional urge to make his overarching theory go a little bit too far.

I am inclined to agree with the first two reviews for this book and offer up my own thoughts on `White King and Red Queen'. Whilst very well written and fascinating for someone interested in Chess, this book places way too much importance on Chess in the political events of the Cold War years. Although the political history on it's own is good and the chess accounts on their own are great, together the links are highly tenuous and makes the book weaker overall. I am sure Chess was important for national prestige and pride, but I doubt it had the political impact the author suggests here. This book has three photo sections which illustrate the various stories and events well and although it is a little dry in places, the writing is engaging and informative. The initial chapters were probably the hardest to engage with, but the chapters on Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky were great, as were the later ones covering Kasparov. If you are a fan of chess then this book will keep you reading and interested throughout, but if you come to this from a historical angle then I feel you will be left feeling frustrated and dubious about the veracity of what is being recounted. A highly polished, but author biased account of Cold War era chess.

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This is a wonderful book about the "Cold War" and how chess was a pawn in the Great Game. Amazon will not change the cover on their site to the correct cover for this book.

A very fine work which provides an entertaining and quite detailed account of chess history over the last 150 years that have seen battles between American and European chess geniuses (for example Morphy triumphing over the European masters, the brilliant and tragic Pillsbury, the great Capablanca (undoubtedly the greatest genius ever to play chess), Reshevsky, and with special emphasis on the rise of Fischer, a player of indomintable will and genius and his ultimate triumph that catapulted him to the status as one of the greatest players to ever play the game. I highly recommend this book.

This book's subtitle is "How the Cold War was fought over the chessboard" and that's exactly what Daniel Johnson gives us. It's a well-researched work similar to "Bobby Fischer Goes to War". This book goes beyond the Fischer-Spassky match providing us with a good history of subsequent grandmaster duels and in covering some aspects of the Kasparaov vs. Deep Blue encounters.

It's also quite current in covering recent developments with discussions of Garry Kasparov's political activities and his not-so-pleasant encounters with Russian authorities during the past few years.

It took me a while to finish this book. Though I was interested in the subject matter covered here, I never felt compelled to get to the next chapter. Perhaps that's due to the fact that I lived thru much of the history covered in this volume.

Overall, it was a very satisfying read. This work provides a very accurate account of the subject matter it covers.

The topic is fascinating, but the execution poor, as the author's childish bias gets in the way. His efforts to defend Korchnoi's ridiculous battle with the paranormal are especially pathetic. Buy this book, because it is very cheap, and give it as a gift to someone you hate.

Author Johnson has written a fine tome about chess during the Cold War, and as long as he deals with the politics of chess he does a good job. But his astounding naivete about the ideological conflict itself discredits his story whenever he strays into the realm of non-chess Cold War politics. He is an unabashed Reaganaut (pr perhaps Reaganut is a better moniker) who paints America and The "Free World" in unvarnished saintly white and the Soviets as devils in shabby clothing. His relating of the mind games within the Soviet chess world is entertaining and revelatory of the rigidity and ossification of socialist thinking in the End Days of World Communism, but his celebratory hosannahs for world capitalism surely must be seen through the prism of the post-2008 debacle of that supposedly "superior" socioeconomic ideology. I particularly liked his descriptions of the Karpov-Kasparov rivalry and the subsequent radicalization of the latter. So, all fans of chess history, by all means get this book. Likewise, all Cold War aficionados, avoid this like like a McCarthyite plague.

I read the book in just a couple of days, which certainly means I liked it. Mr. Johnson writes well and he certainly conveys (at least to the western reader, like me) the stifling atmosphere of the Cold War and its relationship with chess and with professional chess players in the U.S.S.R.

As a big chess fan I knew most of the main facts and even some of the minor stories depicted in the book, but nevertheless it was entertaining and, as it follows a clear chronological path, it works as a good historic overview (although it is by no means a general history of chess).

What I disliked where some of the digressions, like, for instance, the one about Mr. Sharansky, to whom the author devotes a good number of pages, not at all justified in my opinion, when instead those pages are missing when talking about Mr. Mihail Tahl, whose appearance in later chapters as an aide to Mr. Karpov (vs. Mr. Korchnoi) without any explanation of Mr. Tahl's own personal background is a bit offputting. I could offer some other examples like this one.

All in all, I did enjoy it and recommend it.

being a russian i know chess history from the original books, this one is just a shorter story told by american. The facts are incomplete, a lot of small talk by and about dissidents, and no chess. All there is is politics. If you want to read some real chess stories - read book about certain players like Fischer, Tal or Keres.

Daniel Johnson has written about a fascinating era of chess with the gripping edge of a seasoned sportswriter, though he certainly hasn't had to lower himself into the ranks of such ink-stained wretches. His descriptions of the tension-filled scenarios are done with flair...even if you are not that interested in chess, this book entertains and informs at every turn. He's got the details down pat, introducing the novice reader to Mikhail Tal and Alan Turing and many other characters dotting the landscape of international chess.