>>>Sure, it is often discussed in 'my circle'. The consensus is that specific conditions of Russian life (in Soviet days) pushed talented people to excel in chess because they could not excel in traditional careers (the latter were not available).
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>>Probably naive questions from your POV but I have two sincere ones: Do you mean Jewish, and have most of the Russian world champions been Jewish? I honestly don't know.
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>>I know Bobby Fischer was Jewish. Now there was one of the most troubled men who ever walked the earth.
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>In the former Soviet Union chess has much more publicity than here in US. There were special chess magizines, lots of books, public seances, etc.
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>And I remember how popular was match between Karpov and Kasparov...
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>Here I don't remember either hearing chess mentioned in the News.

In regard to books: you may check in Barnes & Noble. It has amazing number of chess books, quite incomparable with Soviet book store (I know that you know the reason :). Also, US chess federation publishes magazines, and NYT :) prints chess news (probably, in Science section).