A good dungeon crawl: Casual readers won’t make it past the start, but treasures abound for experienced adventurers.
The enduring success of Dungeons & Dragons is one of pop culture’s most inexplicable phenomena. Though tabletop gaming historian Peterson has previously chronicled the D&D origin story, notably in the gorgeous Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, this book focuses on the game’s creators, Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. When the gregarious and ambitious Gygax and creative but sensitive Arneson launched D&D in 1974, they casually agreed to a 50/50 split of whatever royalties it might generate. In the agreement that they signed with Gygax’s company, TSR, they retained the option to repurchase rights for a paltry amount not to exceed $300 if the game went out of print—a sign of just how little confidence everyone involved had in its success. When D&D sales surprisingly surged and started generating millions in profit, controversy and thorny legal battles ensued. As Gygax and Arneson jousted over credit in print and in court, brothers Brian and Kevin Blume helped Gygax grow and diversify TSR’s business. While subsequent years saw the company thrive despite the game’s unfair association with the “Satanic Panic” of the early 1980s, profligate spending, lack of a cohesive strategy, and rampant nepotism made TSR a case study in corporate mismanagement. Peterson’s in-depth review of legal documents, contracts, and correspondence creates the most insightful account yet of the Gygax-Arneson feud, but the exhaustive level of detail occasionally bogs down the narrative. D&D fans will need to look elsewhere for a crackling account of the game’s evolution, but grognards and business students alike will find something of value.
A good dungeon crawl: Casual readers won’t make it past the start, but treasures abound for experienced adventurers.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-262-54295-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: MIT Press
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.
New York Times columnist Brooks (The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement, 2011, etc.) returns with another volume that walks the thin line between self-help and cultural criticism.
Sandwiched between his introduction and conclusion are eight chapters that profile exemplars (Samuel Johnson and Michel de Montaigne are textual roommates) whose lives can, in Brooks’ view, show us the light. Given the author’s conservative bent in his column, readers may be surprised to discover that his cast includes some notable leftists, including Frances Perkins, Dorothy Day, and A. Philip Randolph. (Also included are Gens. Eisenhower and Marshall, Augustine, and George Eliot.) Throughout the book, Brooks’ pattern is fairly consistent: he sketches each individual’s life, highlighting struggles won and weaknesses overcome (or not), and extracts lessons for the rest of us. In general, he celebrates hard work, humility, self-effacement, and devotion to a true vocation. Early in his text, he adapts the “Adam I and Adam II” construction from the work of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, Adam I being the more external, career-driven human, Adam II the one who “wants to have a serene inner character.” At times, this veers near the Devil Bugs Bunny and Angel Bugs that sit on the cartoon character’s shoulders at critical moments. Brooks liberally seasons the narrative with many allusions to history, philosophy, and literature. Viktor Frankl, Edgar Allan Poe, Paul Tillich, William and Henry James, Matthew Arnold, Virginia Woolf—these are but a few who pop up. Although Brooks goes after the selfie generation, he does so in a fairly nuanced way, noting that it was really the World War II Greatest Generation who started the ball rolling. He is careful to emphasize that no one—even those he profiles—is anywhere near flawless.
The author’s sincere sermon—at times analytical, at times hortatory—remains a hopeful one.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9325-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even though her refusal to give up her bus seat sparked a revolution, Rosa Parks was no accidental heroine. She was born to...
Theoharis (Political Science/Brooklyn Coll.; co-author: Not Working: Latina Immigrants, Low-Wage Jobs, and the Failure of Welfare, 2006, etc.) has discovered the soul of Rosa Parks (1913–2005), and it’s not that of a docile, middle-age seamstress.
The author successfully goes “behind the icon of Rosa Parks to excavate and examine the scope of her political life.” Parks learned to stand up for her rights as a child; she never backed down from black or white, rich or poor when she knew she was right. She began working for civil rights early in her life and was the first secretary of the Montgomery NAACP in 1947. She also wasn’t the first to refuse to relinquish her seat on the bus, but the strength of her character and a push too far by the local police made her the poster child for the struggle. Her arrest was the impetus for what began as a one-day Montgomery Bus Boycott. That, in turn, united the black population, which had been deeply divided by class and education. While her refusal wasn’t planned in advance, the bus boycott was no spontaneous action. Parks continued to work for equality after she and her husband moved to Detroit, where racism was as bad, if not worse, as that in the South. How Theoharis learned the true nature of this woman is a story in itself. Parks always stood in the background, never volunteered information about herself and eschewed fame. There were no letters to consult; even her autobiography exposed little of the woman’s personality. She hid her light under a bushel, and it has taken an astute author to find the real Parks.
Even though her refusal to give up her bus seat sparked a revolution, Rosa Parks was no accidental heroine. She was born to it, and Theoharis ably shows us how and why.Pub Date: Jan. 29, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8070-5047-7
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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