David Edmonds

On 25 October 1946, in a crowded room in Cambridge, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper came face to face for the first and only time. The encounter lasted only ten minutes, and did not go well. Almost immediately, rumours started to spread around the world that the two philosophers had come to blows, armed with red-hot pokers. But what really happened? Wittgenstein's Poker engagingly winds together philosophy, history and biography into a compelling piece of detective work. It ranges from the place of assimilated Jews in fin-de-siècle Vienna, to what happens to memory under stress, to a vivid portrait of Cambridge and its eccentric set of philosophy dons, including Bertrand Russell (who acted as umpire during the altercation). At the centre of the story stand the philosophers themselves, proud, irascible, larger than life, and spoiling for a fight.'Those ten minutes shook the world of Western philosophy literally to its foundations . . . Edmonds and Eidinow have a very good story to tell, and they tell it wonderfully well.' Irish Times'A meaty, exceedingly well-researched and engaging book. In its dramatic readability Wittgenstein's Poker brings to mind Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman; in the depth and breadth of its scholarship it evokes Carl Schorske's Fin-de-siècle Vienna . . . a marvel of passionate journalism.' San Francisco Chronicle

PERFECT FOR FANS OF NETFLIX'S THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT'Gripping.' SUNDAY TIMES'Pure drama.'INDEPENDENT'Compelling.'NEW YORK TIMESBobby Fischer Goes to War by David Edmonds and John Eidinow details the occasion when Bobby Fischer met Boris Spassky in one of the most thrilling and politically charged chess matches of all time.For decades, the USSR had dominated world chess. Evidence, according to Moscow, of the superiority of the Soviet system. But in 1972 along came the American, Bobby Fischer: insolent, arrogant, abusive, vain, greedy, vulgar, bigoted, paranoid and obsessive - and apparently unstoppable.Against him was Boris Spassky: complex, sensitive, the most un-Soviet of champions. As the authors reveal, when Spassky began to lose, the KGB decided to step in. . .

A captivating blend of philosophy, history, biography, and literary detection brings to life the meeting of two great philosophers--Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper--on October 25, 1946 in Cambridge, England, who had an intense disagreement that erupted in much speculation. Reprint.