Garry Kasparov, himself then the age of 22, became the youngest world chess champion by defeating Anatoly Karpov. Kasparov’s win crossed over into the mainstream news of the time not only because of his youth, but because he was already preaching political ideas that Western countries, still in the grip of the Cold War, approved of. I was 9 at the time of Kasparov’s victory, and my father had already gotten me interested in chess, but I think Kasparov being in the news as I…

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