This week's episode of the New In Chess Podcast features an interview with American international master John Donaldson.

The first time John appeared on the podcast, he was invited as the captain of the American team, on the eve of the 2024 Budapest Olympiad. This time, he talks about his latest book on what may safely be called his hero, Bobby Fischer. John has written a lot about Fischer and in 2022 he published his magnum opus "Bobby Fischer And His World", a thick book of 644 pages bringing together an enormous amount of material about the 11th World Champion.

His latest work is called "Inside The Mind of Bobby Fischer". In a voluminous book of 400 pages, John revisits everything he could find that Fischer has written as a chess analyst. Which means that he not only presents annotated games from Fischer’s very first book, Bobby Fischer’s Games of Chess, but also all the columns he wrote for Boys’ Life, a magazine for the boy scouts of American, and his columns in Chess Life. And there is much more that anyone interested in Fischer would like to see or revisit.

So, if you are looking for a sneak peek or a few teasers of John Donaldson’s fascinating new book, then this podcast is a good place to start!

0:00 – Intro

2:20 – What inspired John to write a new Fischer book?

14:26 – Fischer’s incredible dedication and discipline as a teenager

18:02 – Fischer’s mother Regina

26:25 – Fischer’s lost games

40:50 – AD BREAK

41:23 – The value of Fischer memorabilia

1:01:03 – AD BREAK

1:02:05 – How did John go about analysing Bobby’s old annotations?

1:08:10 - Dimitrije Bjelica

1:11:05 – Is John contemplating a next book about Fischer?

1:17:38 – Outro