Gaming history that’s also valuable as sociology and business scholarship.
A history of the dirt-simple but massively influential video game.
Pong, first released in 1972, wasn’t the first video game; that would be Spacewar!, developed at MIT in the early 1960s. Nor was it the first video game to make it into arcades; that title belongs to Computer Space, developed by Atari founders Ted Dabney and Nolan Bushnell. But Atari’s Pong was the first to become a legitimate phenomenon and moneymaker, and Guins’ academic but readable survey of the game reveals how it was as much a marketing and social coup as a technological one. First installed in a bar in Sunnyvale, California, Pong competed with coin-operated games like pinball machines, but at 25 cents a game compared to the more common 10 cents, it drew a healthier profit than its analog brethren. (Engineer Allan Alcorn recalls receiving a call that the game was malfunctioning, only to learn that the problem was that too many coins had jammed the machine.) Dabney and Bushnell parlayed Pong’s arcade success into a home gaming system, but even there, Atari wasn’t first; in 1972 Magnavox had released a clunkier system, Odyssey, that was expensive and not very user friendly. As Guins explores how Atari beat its competitors, he debunks a few myths that surrounded the company, particularly that its offices were a slacker haven that lucked into millions. The vibe was indeed laid-back at Atari HQ, but the leaders demonstrated plenty of marketing savvy, negotiating the company into a prime spot in Sears’ popular holiday wish book in 1975 and inventing a fake competitor, Kee Games, to get more Atari products into arcades. Guins doesn’t explore the game’s legacy much beyond its place in various museums, but he does nicely show how its success was an uncanny mix of timing, innovation, and salesmanship.
Gaming history that’s also valuable as sociology and business scholarship.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2026
ISBN: 9780262051330
Page Count: 224
Publisher: MIT Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.
A wide-ranging writer on his football fixation.
Is our biggest spectator sport “a practical means for understanding American life”? Klosterman thinks so, backing it up with funny, thought-provoking essays about TV coverage, ethical quandaries, and the rules themselves. Yet those who believe it’s a brutal relic of a less enlightened era need only wait, “because football is doomed.” Marshalling his customary blend of learned and low-culture references—Noam Chomsky, meet AC/DC—Klosterman offers an “expository obituary” of a game whose current “monocultural grip” will baffle future generations. He forecasts that economic and social forces—the NFL’s “cultivation of revenue,” changes in advertising, et al.—will end its cultural centrality. It’s hard to imagine a time when “football stops and no one cares,” but Klosterman cites an instructive precedent. Horse racing was broadly popular a century ago, when horses were more common in daily life. But that’s no longer true, and fandom has plummeted. With youth participation on a similar trajectory, Klosterman foresees a time when fewer people have a personal connection to football, rendering it a “niche” pursuit. Until then, the sport gives us much to consider, with Klosterman as our well-informed guide. Basketball is more “elegant,” but “football is the best television product ever,” its breaks between plays—“the intensity and the nothingness,” à la Sartre—provide thrills and space for reflection or conversation. For its part, the increasing “intellectual density” of the game, particularly for quarterbacks, mirrors a broader culture marked by an “ongoing escalation of corporate and technological control.” Klosterman also has compelling, counterintuitive takes on football gambling, GOAT debates, and how one major college football coach reminds him of “Laura Ingalls Wilder’s much‑loved Little House novels.” A beloved sport’s eventual death spiral has seldom been so entertaining.
A smart, rewarding consideration of football’s popularity—and eventual downfall.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2026
ISBN: 9780593490648
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 24, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2025
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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