Word: fischer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...JOSCHKA FISCHER by Charles Grant...
...left high school without passing exams and shunned university, but Joschka Fischer, Germany's Foreign Minister and a leader of its Green Party, has become one of the leading political thinkers in Europe. In the 1980s he convinced his party that it could not change the world unless it became more pragmatic and therefore electable. He has helped modernize German thinking on the use of force: without his personal intervention, the Bundestag would have voted to support neither NATO action against Serbia in 1999 nor the deployment of German troops to Afghanistan two years later. And his speech at Berlin...
Despite his leftist past--as a young man, he once spent seven weeks in jail and took part in street fights against the Frankfurt police--Fischer did not echo Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's anti-American rhetoric during the 2002 elections. "He understands the importance of U.S. leadership in the world and wants to channel it in the right direction," says Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution. Unlike some other Europeans, says Gordon, "Fischer understands Israel's security dilemmas and the importance of a European commitment to Israeli security." He is thought to covet the position of E.U. Foreign Minister, which...
...Trouble With Genius," Lev Grossman's review of David Edmond and John Eidinow's book Bobby Fischer Goes to War [March 15], suggested that Fischer's irrational behavior detracted from his chess-playing prowess. But in the game of chess, it is important to predict the moves of one's opponent. When a player does not behave rationally, such predictions are hard to make. Viewed in this light, Fischer's antisocial, egomaniacal antics were ingenious psychological ploys that made his opponents second-guess their ideas about the grand master's chess strategies. Fischer's aberrant behavior was a crucial aspect...
Stories about geniuses rarely end well. Hahn wound up in the Navy, assigned to the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the U.S.S. Enterprise, but his officers wouldn't even let him tour the engine room. Champollion died at 40. Fischer never defended his world title. He declined into irascibility and then obscurity. What happened to him? A chess master once said, "Chess is not something that drives people mad. Chess is something that keeps mad people sane." Which is to say that genius may lie not only in having a gift but in lacking something crucial as well. Reading these books...