The author’s clear love of the game is infectious, making for an enjoyable and entertaining read.
The history, evolution and global impact of one of the world’s most popular board games.
Going directly to jail may not rank high on most people’s lists of favorite things to do, but in the context of a board game invented in the early 1900s, it is an essential part of what has become a worldwide sensation. Orbanes (The Monopoly Companion, 1988) is chief judge in a Monopoly competition that has existed since 1979 and has held the lofty position of Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Parker Brothers, the company that continues to produce the game; as such, he is perfectly placed to produce this fascinating history of a phenomenon that continues to attract legions of fans. Orbanes begins by sketching out the origins of the property-trading game, originally called The Landlord’s Game. Lizzie Magie patented this incarnation of Monopoly in 1904, and the rules were finely honed over the years until George Parker bought the rights in 1935 and finalized the rules, turning it into the game that is still played today. The subsequent popularity of Monopoly across the globe is carefully pored over by the author, while interesting snippets of information, such as the lamentable destruction of almost all of the 1939 editions of The Landlord’s Game and Mussolini’s objection to the game being produced in Italy, help enliven the text. Orbanes also plots Monopoly’s rocky evolution, pointing out that the game hasn’t always been an unequivocal success, while also charting its glorious rise. He writes enthusiastically about the tournament over which he presides, detailing how the prize money has escalated over the years, and notes that Jay Walker—founder of Priceline—was once a contestant. Various versions of the game are listed alongside a reminder of the rules and photographs of vintage editions of the game.
The author’s clear love of the game is infectious, making for an enjoyable and entertaining read.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2006
ISBN: 0-306-81489-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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