The Brady Bunch

In Blitzing Fischer, I wondered how much of Frank Brady's latest book on Bobby Fischer, 'ENDGAME' (Crown Publishers), overlapped his previous work 'Bobby Fischer: Profile of a Prodigy'. I have a copy of the 1989 edition of 'Profile of a Prodigy' (Dover Publications), which purports to be

an unabridged and unaltered republication of the 1973 revised edition of the work first published in 1965 by the David McKay Company, Inc., New York, under the title Profile of a Prodigy: The Life and Games of Bobby Fischer.

I also have a copy of the 1965 David McKay edition, making it easy to compare all three books by Brady. Since both editions of 'Profile of a Prodigy' lack a table of contents, I created them myself and appended them to the bottom of this post (the chapter summaries are mine), along with with a copy of the contents of the new book 'ENDGAME'. You can see immediately that the first eight chapters of the 1965 edition of 'Profile of a Prodigy' match the first nine chapters of the 1972/1989 edition. Indeed, substantial portions of the two editions are identical.

I calculated that a page of the 1965 edition has approximately 400 words per page, while the denser 1972/1989 edition has about 500 words per page. This implies that chapter two of the 1972/1989 edition has about 50% more material than the earlier edition. This is just a rough estimate and not to be taken too seriously. Consider those per page estimates together with my calculation that 'ENDGAME' has about 400 words per page and you can get a good idea how much new material there is in 'ENDGAME'.

Since all but the last chapter of 'Profile of a Prodigy' (257 pages) overlap the first ten chapters of 'ENDGAME' (205 pages), it's clear that 'Profile of a Prodigy' has more detailed coverage of specific tournaments in Fischer's career. In fact, 'ENDGAME' sometimes mentions an event only in passing where 'Profile of a Prodigy' has a round by round description of the same event. The most important event in Fischer's career, the 1972 title match with Spassky, was reduced from five chapters and 28.000 words to one chapter and 12.000 words.

As a balance to this reduced material, the last third of 'ENDGAME' covers material which transpired after the finish of the 1972 match. The most important were the 1975 default against Karpov, the 1992 return match with Spassky, Fischer's detention in Japan, and his final years in Iceland. 'ENDGAME' also has substantial fresh material from Fischer's early years. This, along with new angles on Fischer's life in other chapters (e.g. money, the Church of God), made for a particularly pleasurable read.

Back to my original question on overlap, the two books have enough differences that they complement each other nicely. Both are worthy elements of any serious chess library.

***

[Chapter, start page, description]

Profile of a Prodigy (McKay, 1965):-
-- --- Introduction (December 1964)
01 001 Early years
02 017 Thru Zurich 1959
03 028 Thru Leipzig 1960
04 042 Thru Ginzburg 1961
05 057 Thru Curacao 1962
06 074 Thru Varna 1962
07 079 Thru end-1963
08 084 Thru end-1964
09 092 Psychology & future
-- 101 75 games [last is Fischer - Benko, U.S. Chp 1963]
-- 249 Index of players
-- 251 [last + 1]

Profile of a Prodigy (Dover, 1989; 26 photos):-
-- --- Introduction (October 1972)
01 001 Early years [Chapter intro: 'When I was eleven, I just got good.']
02 015 Thru Zurich 1959
03 030 Thru Leipzig 1960
04 041 Thru Ginzburg 1961
05 048 Thru Stockholm 1962
06 053 Thru Curacao 1962
07 064 Thru Varna 1962
08 068 Thru end-1963
09 074 Thru end-1964
10 083 Thru Havana 1965
11 092 Thru end-1965
12 095 Thru prelims Santa Monica 1966
13 100 Thru Santa Monica 1966
14 108 Thru prelims Havana 1966
15 117 Thru Havana 1966
16 121 Thru Monaco 1967
17 128 Thru Skopje 1967
18 133 Thru Sousse 1967
19 142 Thru end-1968
20 151 Thru end-1969
21 158 Thru Zagreb 1970
22 168 Thru Siegen 1970
23 174 Thru Palma 1970
24 182 Thru Taimanov 1971
25 189 Thru Petrosian 1971
26 201 1972 Negotiations I
27 213 1972 Negotiations II
28 221 1972 Will he play?
29 230 1972 Arrival in Iceland
30 241 1972 Spassky match
31 258 Psychology & future
-- 269 90 games [last is 1972 g.21]
-- 403 Tournament & Match Record
-- 406 Index of players
-- 409 Crosstables of major tournaments
-- 425 General index
-- 436 [last + 1]

[Chapter, start page, title (my description)]

ENDGAME (2011)
-- ix Author's Note
01 001 Loneliness to Passion [chapter titles from book]
02 019 Childhood Obsession
03 038 Out of the Head of Zeus [thru 1957 U.S. Chp (zonal)]
04 080 The American Wunderkind [thru Portoroz 1958]
05 109 The Cold War Gladiator [Yugoslavia 1959, Church of God]
06 123 The New Fischer [money, Mar del Plata 1960, Leipzig 1960]
07 134 Einstein’s Theory [thru Curacao 1962]
08 150 Legends Clash [thru Santa Monica 1966]
09 162 The Candidate [thru Petrosian 1971]
10 172 The Champion [1972 Spassky match]
11 205 The Wilderness Years
12 231 Fischer-Spassky Redux
13 259 Crossing Borders
14 279 Arrest and Rescue
15 295 Living and Dying in Iceland
-- 320 Epilogue
-- 329 Acknowledgments
-- 333 Notes
-- 379 Bibliography
-- 385 Index [not present in the advance copy]