Tristan Donovan

Tristan Donovan seems to have two ambitions for this book. First, he wants to show that the history of board games is as long, as interesting and as quirky as human history itself. Board games, he shows, have been an important part of just about every human society. Second, he wants to develop a more general explanation for why board games have played such an important role in people's lives. He is much more successful at the first ambition, though he certainly raises many thought-provoking show more points about how games have enlarged and enriched human experience. Bottom line: this is a great place to start for someone who enjoys tabletop gaming and is interested to learn more about it. show less

This book is subtitled “The History of Board Games from Monopoly to Settlers of Catan,” however, it starts its story well before that, with games found in ancient tombs and with chess. I think “history” is a bit of a misnomer. While there is lots of history here, each chapter of the book has a strong theme and can stand alone. The chapters often go well beyond the straightforward subject of board games to encompass subjects such as the grown in computer intelligence—first to take show more on and beat the world’s best chess players—then to win at the more complex game of Go. The chapter on Trivial Pursuit highlights the rise in games that appeal to adults. The chapter that starts out talking about the 1960s sensation, Twister, expands to cover several games that have sexual aspects. The chapter on Scrabble addresses the international differences in how Scrabble is played and how it is now a game of memorization rather than vocabulary.

The author traces the development of chess from its beginnings, through regional and cultural variations in how pieces looked and moved, to its modern form played all over the world. Later we see how more modern games, such as The Game of Life and Clue, have also evolved, with updates and variants intended to help them appeal to new generations of players. As the book shows, this strategy doesn’t always work, and some of the failures are amusing.

The book also focuses on the creators and other personalities in the board games industry, such as the memorable Marvin Glass, who led the trend toward more action-oriented 3-dimensional games such as Mouse Trap. Sadly, some of the best game creators never received the credit or financial success they were due, as their ideas were popularized by others, who took the credit, or who signed away their ideas for a pittance rather than the millions that could have been theirs.

At well under 300 pages, this book can hardly be comprehensive. No doubt some of your favorites will be left out. But what is here is engrossing, entertaining, and highly educational. The author writes extremely well, and his serious treatment of the subject is a complete winner. Happily, a new generation seems to have re-discovered board games and embraced new ones, such as Settlers of Catan or Pandemic, and the face-to-face interaction they provide with family and friends. It seems that despite computers and the internet, board games more popular than ever. show less

Donovan's collection of essays about the development of board games is made up of two rather awkwardly intermingled halves. Roughly half the essays are about specific games: what led up to their development, how they achieved success, and then either how people have continued to build upon their cultural familiarity or how our culture's appreciation of them has shifted over time. The other half are about changing cultural values and how they are applied to board games over time, perhaps best show more typified by, but not limited to, a specific popular title. Though they may not sound very different at first, one set of essays satisfies, and one does not.

The essays driven by a single game are very satisfying because they tell coherent stories. By and large, these are found in the first half of the book - covering chess, backgammon, Monopoly, the Game of Life, Scrabble, and Clue - and while they occasionally divert into tangents, those seem connected to the original topic. The backgammon chapter examines its fall from grace with the celebrity set, who moved their attention to Texas Hold 'Em poker; the Scrabble chapter increasingly becomes about the development and purpose of Scrabble dictionaries. These little offshoots make sense. They are compelling. They clarify rather than confuse.

The second set of essays isn't nearly as attention-grabbing, mostly because they lack that cohesive, unified story. Sometimes they feel like they've each been bolted together from three or four smaller articles that couldn't stand on their own. The Risk chapter is only minimally about Risk, and far more about the use of war board games to strategize real conflict, from Kriegsspiel on up. The Trivial Pursuit chapter contextualizes Trivial Pursuit as just one game in a big social shift in the '80s to create "grown-up" board games. The Twister chapter somewhat clunkily veers from the sexual implications of Twister to the very real sexuality of Monogamy. Only two of these broader-style essays really come through clearly: the one about ancient games at the very beginning, and the one about the rise of German games at the end. For whatever reason, those have a cultural point to make that carries them above the specific games involved; they feel meaningful in a way that, say, an examination of the development of machine learning does not.

To Donovan's credit, there's a recognizable pattern in the essay titles. Almost all of the essays that focus directly on a specific game centralize that title, while others provide a specific game or games only in a subtitle. Still, a casual browser could be excused for making assumptions.

Overall, I recommend the book, especially as a library read. Just don't be surprised if the coherency feels like it starts to dwindle away the longer you go on. show less

This is a wonderful slim volume full of stories of when the wild clashes with the urban - and the results thereof. There are stories of foreign invaders: the Japanese cockroach, Giant African Land Snails, tegus, boas, and pythons. There are stories of humans encroaching on the natural habitats of creatures like elk, bears, mountain lions, leopards, and more. Then there are the stories of more unusual things still: the sheer unknowns.

How have we never studied what anthropods exist in our show more homes? How have we never considered the wilderness below our very feet? It boggles the mind.

This book encompasses the philosophy that I was only recently exposed to thanks to the wonderful writing of [a: Lyanda Lynn Haupt|16810|Lyanda Lynn Haupt|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1248017975p2/16810.jpg]. It isn't so much our way of life that needs to change - things such as cities will always exist - but rather our perspective itself that requires an overhaul. Programs like the Lights Out (a brilliant program I myself am part of) are helping us understand how we can change our architecture to lessen bird collisions during migratory seasons. We can change our cities to encourage wildlife diversity, to foster more green spaces that are good for both ourselves and the animals we share our lives with. There is no separation between city and wilderness, ultimately. It's all wilderness, just some has been manufactured by us and it's important we learn how to improve it for the benefit of the creatures around us as well as ourselves. show less