I just finished reading the section on Capablanca from Kasparov's book, "My great presecessors", vol. 1. Overall the book is great and having so many important games annotated by Kasparov can only help ones chess.

 Kasparov praised Steinitz, hailed Lasker and obviously respects Pilsbury, Rubinstein and Nimzowitsch a great deal. My question is was he fair to Capablanca? I felt he never misses a chance to be a strict on Capa.

 Analysis is analysis and mistakes must be pointed out but did all players go under Kasparov's microscope under the same conditions? I think he was somewhat partial on Capa, going through the text makes the reader wonder if Capa had any fighting spirit at all.

 I hope the following World Champions are judged on a fair basis, as it doesn't feel right to be so harsh on a person especially if that person is gone and cannot defend himself. Can a World Champion with such a tournament record be "lazy" ? This sort of criticism, imho, is fit for club players not for some of the best players that ever lived. Yes in that time they could have well been less prepared, this happened in swimming, professional boxing, 100m sprint as well. Should we blame all recordmen of that time for living in the 20s?

 After all if "lazy" was a generally accepted label for Capa, why did Botvinnik teach his pupils to "play like Capablanca"?