White King And Red Queen-howthe Cold War Was Fought On The Chessboard

摘要

This entertaining and well-written book suffers from an over-ambitious thesis. 'By providing the safety valve that kept the lid on the Cold War, chess helped to save civilization from itself, writes Daniel Johnson. He nowhere justifies such an exorbitant claim. What he does show, is that chess and politics have intertwined in some fascinating ways. But saving civilisation? Perhaps chess players become devoted for an opposite reason: chess has very little to do with politics, life, or anything other than itself. Whereas even the most abstruse branches of mathematics could have some eventual bearing on physical theory, chess is a world apart. There precisely lies its charm. It may be no accident that the game was invented by Buddhists (as far as we know). The charm may lie in its pointlessness.