Book description
Garry Kasparov was the highest-rated chess player in the world for
over twenty years and is widely considered the greatest player that
ever lived. In How Life Imitates Chess Kasparov distills the
lessons he learned over a lifetime as a Grandmaster to offer a primer
on successful decision-making: how to evaluate opportunities,
anticipate the future, devise winning strategies. He relates in a
lively, original way all the fundamentals, from the nuts and bolts of
strategy, evaluation, and preparation to the subtler, more human arts
of developing a personal style and using memory, intuition,
imagination and even fantasy. Kasparov takes us through the great
matches of his career, including legendary duels against both man
(Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov) and machine (IBM chess supercomputer Deep
Blue), enhancing the lessons of his many experiences with examples
from politics, literature, sports and military history.
With candor, wisdom, and humor, Kasparov recounts his victories and his
blunders, both from his years as a world-class competitor as well as his
new life as a political leader in Russia. An inspiring book that
combines unique strategic insight with personal memoir,
How Life
Imitates Chess
is a glimpse inside the mind of one of today's greatest and most
innovative thinkers. Riveting...[Kasparov] makes his debut as a
management guru. If retired jocks can write inspirational books, I see
no reason to exclude retired chess luminaries from the field of
management advice, and executives will find Kasparov's prescriptions
useful. The man is a genius, for Pete's sake.
Garry
Kasparov grew up in Baku, Azerbaijan (USSR) and became the
youngest ever world chess champion in 1985 at the age of 22. He held
that title until 2000. He retired from professional chess in March
2005 to found the United Civil Front in Russia, and
has dedicated himself to establishing free and fair elections in his
homeland. A longtime contributing editor at The Wall Street
Journal, Kasparov travels around the world to address corporations
and business audiences on strategy and leadership, and he appears
frequently in the international media to talk about both chess and
politics. When not traveling he divides his time between Moscow and
St. Petersburg.
