Garry Kasparov's 1997 chess match against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue was a watershed moment in the history of technology. It was the dawn of a new era in artificial intelligence: A machine capable of beating the reigning human champion at this most cerebral game. That moment was more than a century in the making, and in this breakthrough audiobook, Kasparov reveals his astonishing side of the story for the first time. He describes how it felt to strategize against an implacable, untiring opponent with the whole world watching.

From Frank Brady, who wrote one of the best-selling books on Bobby Fischer of all time and who was himself a friend of Fischer’s, comes an impressively researched biography that for the first time completely captures the remarkable arc of Bobby Fischer’s life. When Bobby Fischer passed away in January 2008, he left behind a confounding legacy. Everyone knew the basics of his life—he began as a brilliant youngster, then became the pride of American chess, then took a sharp turn, struggling with paranoia and mental illness. But nobody truly understood him.

Impress your friends with superior opening knowledge without the tedious study. Knowing the history of chess will prove your cleverness even more effectively than winning over the board. Once you have listened to this audiobook, you can explain the origins of the names to your opponent, and even if you lose the game, your opponent will still be impressed. Enjoy this capitvating romp through the names of the first few moves in this enjoyable addition to any chess player's library. Prepare to be surprised, amazed, amused and informed.

How Life Imitates Chess is a primer on how to think, make decisions, prepare strategies, and anticipate the future. Kasparov has distilled the lessons he learned over a lifetime as a chess grandmaster to cover the practical side - tactics, strategy, preparation, as well as the subtler, more human arts of using memory, intuition, and imagination.

In the summer of 1972, with a presidential crisis stirring in the United States and the cold war at a pivotal point, two men, the Soviet world chess champion Boris Spassky and his American challenger Bobby Fischer, met in the most notorious chess match of all time. Their showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, held the world spellbound for two months with reports of psychological warfare, ultimatums, political intrigue, cliffhangers, and farce to rival a Marx Brothers film.

The fame of the The Royal Game is evident in the number of translations. The last work of the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig can be read today in over 60 languages. The first translation into English appeared in New York in 1944. In Germany, the book has become a constant bestseller. The first-person narrator learns of the presence of the world chess champion Mirko Czentovic on a boat trip from New York to Buenos Aires. Together with his acquaintance Mc Connor and other chess players, the first-person narrator manages to challenge the world champion to a game of chess.

Jonathan Rowson’s competitive success as a Grandmaster and his work as a philosopher of public policy have given him a unique perspective on why the great game is more important than ever for understanding the conflicts and uncertainties of the modern world. In 64 witty and addictive vignettes, Rowson takes us on an exhilarating tour of the game of life, from the psychology of gang violence, to the aesthetics of cyborgs, the beauty of technical details, and the endgame of death.

Jennifer Shahade, a two-time US Women's Chess Champion, spent her teens and twenties travelling the world playing chess. Tournaments have taken her from Istanbul to Moscow, and introduced her to players from Zambia to China. In this ultra male-dominated sport, Jennifer found shocking sexism, as well as an incredible history of the top female players that has often been ignored. But she also found friendships, feminism and hope. Through her own story, as well as in-depth profiles of pioneers of the game, Jennifer invites us into the extremely competitive world of chess.

In Mastery, Robert Greene's fifth book, he mines the biographies of great historical figures for clues about gaining control over our own lives and destinies. Picking up where The 48 Laws of Power left off, Greene culls years of research and original interviews to blend historical anecdote and psychological insight, distilling the universal ingredients of the world's masters.

The ascension of Vladimir Putin - a former lieutenant colonel of the KGB - to the presidency of Russia in 1999 should have been a signal that the country was headed away from democracy. Yet in the intervening years - as America and the world's other leading powers have continued to appease him - Putin has grown into not only a dictator but a global threat. With his vast resources and nuclear weapons, Putin is at the center of a worldwide assault on political liberty.

The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction, cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade. Deep within a fabled labyrinth on a barren world, a Planet of the Dead proscribed to mortals, lay a fugitive Mind. Both the Culture and the Idirans sought it....

In SPQR, world-renowned classicist Mary Beard narrates the unprecedented rise of a civilization that even 2,000 years later still shapes many of our most fundamental assumptions about power, citizenship, responsibility, political violence, empire, luxury, and beauty.

The 15th century saw the longest and bloodiest series of civil wars in British history. The crown of England changed hands five times as two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty fought to the death for the right to rule. Now, celebrated historian Dan Jones describes how the longest reigning British royal family tore itself apart until it was finally replaced by the Tudors. Some of the greatest heroes and villains in history were thrown together in these turbulent times.

One day, 14-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find two notes in her mailbox, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl.

Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable.

Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable.

Claude Shannon was a tinkerer, a playful wunderkind, a groundbreaking polymath, and a digital pioneer whose insights made the Information Age possible. He constructed fire-breathing trumpets and customized unicycles, outfoxed Vegas casinos, and built juggling robots, but he also wrote the seminal text of the Digital Revolution. That work allowed scientists to measure and manipulate information as objectively as any physical object. His work gave mathematicians and engineers the tools to bring that world to pass.

In this collection of essays, Walter Isaacson reflects on the lessons to be learned from Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton, and various other interesting characters he has chronicled as a biographer and journalist. The people he writes about have an awesome intelligence, in most cases, but that is not the secret of their success.

How "Aha!" really happens....When do you get your best ideas? You probably answer "At night" or "In the shower" or "Stuck in traffic". You get a flash of insight. Things come together in your mind. You connect the dots. You say to yourself, "Aha! I see what to do." Brain science now reveals how these flashes of insight happen. It's a special form of intuition. We call it strategic intuition, because it gives you an idea for action - a strategy. This new book by William Duggan is the first full treatment of strategic intuition.

Few things in life are more satisfying than beating a rival. We love to win and hate to lose, whether it's on the playing field or at the ballot box, in the office or in the classroom. In this bold new look at human behavior, award-winning journalist and Olympian Matthew Syed explores the truth about our competitive nature: why we win, why we don't, and how we really play the game of life.

They never knew how he did it. Few composers write more than one or two symphonies in their lifetimes. Beethoven spent a year on his shorter symphonies but more than six years on his 9th Symphony. The prodigy Mozart finished his last three symphonies (39, 40, and 41) in the span of a few weeks. His 25th Symphony took only two days.

Alan Mathison Turing. Mathematician, philosopher, codebreaker, a founder of computer science, and the father of Artificial Intelligence, Turing was one of the most original thinkers of the last century - and the man whose work helped create the computer-driven world we now inhabit. But he was also an enigmatic figure, deeply reticent yet also strikingly naive. Turing's openness about his homosexuality at a time when it was an imprisonable offense ultimately led to his untimely death at the age of only 41.

The study of budo, or the Japanese martial arts for self-cultivation, is a lifelong path toward perfection of character. Here, Dave Lowry, a sword master who has practiced and taught budo for over 40 years, addresses the myriad issues, vagaries, and inconsistencies that arise for students of karate-do, judo, kendo, kenjutsu, aikido, and iaido as their training develops.

The Cave and the Light reveals how two Greek philosophers became the twin fountainheads of Western culture, and how their rivalry gave Western civilization its unique dynamism down to the present.

Bertrand Russell wrote that mathematics can exalt "as surely as poetry". This is especially true of one equation: ei(pi) + 1 = 0, the brainchild of Leonhard Euler, the Mozart of mathematics. More than two centuries after Euler's death, it is still regarded as a conceptual diamond of unsurpassed beauty. Called Euler's identity, or God's equation, it includes just five numbers but represents an astonishing revelation of hidden connections.

Here is the remarkable story of how medieval Arab scholars made dazzling advances in science and philosophy, and of the itinerant Europeans who brought this knowledge back to the West. For centuries following the fall of Rome, Western Europe was a benighted backwater, a world of subsistence farming, minimal literacy, and violent conflict. Meanwhile, Arab culture was thriving, dazzling those Europeans fortunate enough to catch even a glimpse.

Lost Enlightenment recounts how, between the years 800 and 1200, Central Asia led the world in trade and economic development, the size and sophistication of its cities, the refinement of its arts, and, above all, in the advancement of knowledge in many fields. Central Asians achieved signal breakthroughs in astronomy, mathematics, geology, medicine, chemistry, music, social science, philosophy, and theology, among other subjects.

The Element shows the vital need to enhance creativity and innovation by thinking differently about human resources and imagination. It is an essential strategy for transforming education, business, and communities to meet the challenges of living and succeeding in the 21st century.

Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it.

On a brutal winter's day in 1650 in Stockholm, Frenchman Rene Descartes, the most influential and controversial thinker of his time, was buried after a cold and lonely deathfar from home. Sixteen years later, the pious French Ambassador Hugues de Terlon secretly unearthed Descartes' bones and transported them to France. Why would this devoutly Catholic official care so much about the remains of a philosopher who washounded from country after country on charges of atheism?

The fame of the The Royal Game is evident in the number of translations. The last work of the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig can be read today in over 60 languages. The first translation into English appeared in New York in 1944. In Germany, the book has become a constant bestseller. The first-person narrator learns of the presence of the world chess champion Mirko Czentovic on a boat trip from New York to Buenos Aires. Together with his acquaintance Mc Connor and other chess players, the first-person narrator manages to challenge the world champion to a game of chess.

How Life Imitates Chess is a primer on how to think, make decisions, prepare strategies, and anticipate the future. Kasparov has distilled the lessons he learned over a lifetime as a chess grandmaster to cover the practical side - tactics, strategy, preparation, as well as the subtler, more human arts of using memory, intuition, and imagination.

Impress your friends with superior opening knowledge without the tedious study. Knowing the history of chess will prove your cleverness even more effectively than winning over the board. Once you have listened to this audiobook, you can explain the origins of the names to your opponent, and even if you lose the game, your opponent will still be impressed. Enjoy this capitvating romp through the names of the first few moves in this enjoyable addition to any chess player's library. Prepare to be surprised, amazed, amused and informed.

From Frank Brady, who wrote one of the best-selling books on Bobby Fischer of all time and who was himself a friend of Fischer’s, comes an impressively researched biography that for the first time completely captures the remarkable arc of Bobby Fischer’s life. When Bobby Fischer passed away in January 2008, he left behind a confounding legacy. Everyone knew the basics of his life—he began as a brilliant youngster, then became the pride of American chess, then took a sharp turn, struggling with paranoia and mental illness. But nobody truly understood him.

In the summer of 1972, with a presidential crisis stirring in the United States and the cold war at a pivotal point, two men, the Soviet world chess champion Boris Spassky and his American challenger Bobby Fischer, met in the most notorious chess match of all time. Their showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, held the world spellbound for two months with reports of psychological warfare, ultimatums, political intrigue, cliffhangers, and farce to rival a Marx Brothers film.

Garry Kasparov's 1997 chess match against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue was a watershed moment in the history of technology. It was the dawn of a new era in artificial intelligence: A machine capable of beating the reigning human champion at this most cerebral game. That moment was more than a century in the making, and in this breakthrough audiobook, Kasparov reveals his astonishing side of the story for the first time. He describes how it felt to strategize against an implacable, untiring opponent with the whole world watching.

At age thirty-three, Maurice Ashley became the first African American to attain the rank of International Grand Master of Chess. Since that historic moment, he has brought his love of the game to a wide audience as an educator, innovator, and motivational speaker.

One of the most important reasons to study chess openings is to understand how and where to develop the pieces. Knowledge is power, and chess is no exception. Many beginners do not spend time even on basic opening preparation. That is why the opening is a brand new experience every time. Some chess openings are better than others. Using a time-tested opening can help you improve your game and even boost your chance of winning. Recognizing and understanding the best openings can increase your confidence in the beginning phase of the game. But, how can you chose the best opening among others ...

Chess is the ultimate turn-based strategy game. For centuries, it has honed the decision-making skills of kings and the strategic thinking of generals. Modern studies show that chess promotes brain development at any age, prevents Alzheimer's, and trains both sides of the brain to work in synergy. And today, learning chess is easier than you think!

"Chess Story," also known as "The Royal Game," is Stefan Zweig's compelling novella that unfolds on a passenger steamer. It narrates the psychological duel between Mirko Czentovic, a chess champion with a mysterious past, and Dr. B, a reclusive genius. Set against the backdrop of World War II, the story explores themes of isolation, obsession, and the struggle for intellectual sanity.

Author Brin-Jonathan Butler was granted unique access to the two-and-half-week tournament (the World Chess Championship) and watched every move. In The Grandmaster, he aims to do for Magnus Carlsen what Norman Mailer did for Muhammed Ali in The Fight, John McPhee did for Arthur Ashe in Levels of the Game, and David Foster Wallace did for Roger Federer in his famous New York Times Magazine profile. Butler captures one of the world’s greatest sportsmen at the height of his powers and attempts to decipher the secret to that greatness.