An illuminating book that both introduces and critiques an often overlooked art form.
A nonfiction work explores society and culture through the lens of tabletop games.
Board games have undergone a resurgence in recent years—perhaps partly, debut author Moriarity argues, as a rejection of the ubiquity of digital entertainment—but they have been with us for centuries. They often replicate some aspect of real life: war, wealth accumulation, resource management. In this way, they provide an intriguing mirror of the society in which they are created. “This is not a book of strategy tips or game reviews,” writes Moriarity at the beginning of this volume. “It is about the things games can teach us about ourselves. Each chapter focuses on one or two game titles…and draws out a revealed lesson in history, psychology, philosophy, society or culture.” Moriarity, a gamer-turned-writer, and Kay (Among the Truthers, 2017, etc.), a writer-turned-gamer, take turns, chapter by chapter, pulling at those threads that they find most interesting. Kay uses Settlers of Catan—the first European title to become highly popular in the United States—to examine how European board games in the postwar years tended to focus on peaceful, creative themes in contrast to the conflict- and competition-driven American ones like Risk. Moriarity reveals how The Game of Life—the 1960 reimagining of Milton Bradley’s original 1860 game The Checkered Game of Life—dispensed with its predecessor’s concept of moral choice and replaced it with a deterministic quest to gain material wealth. In addition to providing a window into society, games offer players an opportunity to learn (sometimes unwittingly) about other segments of society. Kay discovers how two games—Greenland and 1812: The Invasion of Canada—made him think about and even identify with different cultures. Moriarity (in a chapter called “Horrible People”) confronts her prejudices about the sort of people who love Cards Against Humanity. Kay and Moriarity are both skilled writers and elucidators, and their voices are distinct enough to provide the book with a pleasing yin and yang. Their dueling chapters on Monopoly skillfully illustrate their various interests. Kay comments on how the game’s poor-get-poorer, rich-get-richer mechanic is “characteristic of a certain dynamic observed in nature, engineering, and human relationships, one that mathematicians sometimes describe as unstable equilibrium.” Moriarity, meanwhile, focuses on the psychological benefits—and worsened gameplay—of the popular but noncanonical Stupid Free Parking Rule: “I am using the word ‘rule’ in the loosest possible sense because there is, in fact, no such rule—which is a big part of the problem.” The authors include a mix of classic titles that most readers will know (Scattergories, Scrabble, Dungeons & Dragons), with more-complex offerings from the tabletop world (Pandemic, Dead of Winter, Legend of the Five Rings). It’s a far more perceptive and intriguing book than it appears at first blush, particularly for those readers who have never thought of games as an artistic medium—at least not one that comments on society. Regular gamers will enjoy these takes on familiar titles. And readers just discovering the tabletop renaissance will likely want to play some of these games themselves.
An illuminating book that both introduces and critiques an often overlooked art form.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-9994395-4-5
Page Count: 180
Publisher: Sutherland House
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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