A compelling corporate saga mired in mythmaking.
A chronicle of the rise and fall of TSR, the company behind Dungeons & Dragons.
With a trove of research and candid interviews, Riggs investigates the many missteps that would ultimately sour “years of stunning success” for the tabletop gaming giant. This debut book follows the creation of D&D by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the incorporation of TSR, and Gygax’s eventual ousting from the company in 1985 due to slippery shareholder politics. The new CEO, Lorraine Williams, was more of a businesswoman than a gamer. Amid declining sales of kits and rulebooks, Williams sought success elsewhere in the market, overseeing the production of breakout fantasy novels and ill-fated gimmicks like VHS–integrated board games. TSR failed to retain its staff and took for granted the artists and writers who contributed to its occasional victories. Eventually, a shifty distribution contract with Random House left a “pile of debt…[that] threatened to bury TSR,” which ultimately led to the company’s 1997 acquisition by rivals Wizards of the Coast. TSR’s story is inherently compelling, but Riggs ceaselessly attempts to conjure additional lore from the company’s history. He exalts Gygax, referring to him as “Saint Gary” numerous times, and descriptions of the old TSR offices repeat ad nauseam throughout the text as the author tries to transform the spaces into hallowed grounds. Like his description of Gygax’s prose, Riggs is often “labyrinthine and bombastic,” hailing many creators as geniuses and Einsteins of their field. Many sections are riddled with rhetorical questions and quickly answered. “Was this the end?” Riggs asks in an early chapter. This indirect, undercooked storytelling will frustrate many readers. Riggs is certainly a passionate raconteur, but one can easily imagine a better tale without the unnecessary embellishments. Jon Peterson’s Game Wizards and David Ewalt’s Of Dice and Men are good choices for veteran gamers, but it seems the definitive history of D&D has yet to be written.
A compelling corporate saga mired in mythmaking.Pub Date: July 19, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-250-27804-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
