Here are 100 books that The Elfish Gene fans have personally recommended if you like
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In the 1980s I was bullied for playing Dungeons and Dragons. Kids like to bully each other, but this was different: The bullies felt they had been given a moral license to pick on D&D players because pastors, talk-show hosts, and politicians were all claiming it was a Satanic, anti-Christian game. Those claims were my first inkling that adults did not know what they are talking about. After getting a PhD in the sociology of religion, I was finally able analyze and articulate why religious authorities felt threatened by a simple game of imagination.
Peterson is the foremost historian on the history of Dungeons and Dragons.
To research this book, he tracked down countless documents from the early history of the game––including things like greeting cards from game creator Gary Gygax. But this book doesn’t just cover D&D. It traces the history of simulation games from chess through nineteenth-century military training exercises and finally into the emergence of fantasy role-playing games.
This is the definitive source on the history of these games.
Explore the conceptual origins of wargames and role-playing games in this unprecedented history of simulating the real and the impossible. From a vast survey of primary sources ranging from eighteenth-century strategists to modern hobbyists, Playing at the World distills the story of how gamers first decided fictional battles with boards and dice, and how they moved from simulating wars to simulating people. The invention of role-playing games serves as a touchstone for exploring the ways that the literary concept of character, the lure of fantastic adventure and the principles of gaming combined into the signature cultural innovation of the late…
In the 1980s I was bullied for playing Dungeons and Dragons. Kids like to bully each other, but this was different: The bullies felt they had been given a moral license to pick on D&D players because pastors, talk-show hosts, and politicians were all claiming it was a Satanic, anti-Christian game. Those claims were my first inkling that adults did not know what they are talking about. After getting a PhD in the sociology of religion, I was finally able analyze and articulate why religious authorities felt threatened by a simple game of imagination.
This was the first sociological study of fantasy role-playing games. Fine was able to detect and articulate what is sociologically significant about these games.
The book takes dynamics that role-players just “get” and articulates them as sociological concepts. For example, he uses “frame theory” to explain how players verbally transition from the frame of the game mechanics and the story world of their characters.
He also explains how games like Dungeons and Dragons are “autotelic.” In other words, you do not “win” at and these games, the purpose is “engrossment” or being absorbed into the fantasy world.
Fine also did a great deal of participant observation for this book and it provides a great historical insight into the culture surrounding these games in the early 1980s––warts and all.
This classic study still provides one of the most astute descriptions available of an often misunderstood subculture: that of fantasy role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. Gary Alan Fine immerses himself in several different gaming systems, offering insightful details on the nature of the games and the patterns of interaction among players - as well as their reasons for playing.
In the 1980s I was bullied for playing Dungeons and Dragons. Kids like to bully each other, but this was different: The bullies felt they had been given a moral license to pick on D&D players because pastors, talk-show hosts, and politicians were all claiming it was a Satanic, anti-Christian game. Those claims were my first inkling that adults did not know what they are talking about. After getting a PhD in the sociology of religion, I was finally able analyze and articulate why religious authorities felt threatened by a simple game of imagination.
If you want to know about the origins of Dungeons and Dragons but are intimidated by Jon Peterson’s massive tome, this is a good alternative.
Ewart’s writing is fun and enjoyable to read. This book also came out right before the release of 5th edition D&D. Readers who first learned that edition may be interested in Ewart’s coverage of playtesting and design.
The Hobbit meets Moneyball in this definitive book on Dungeons & Dragons—from its origins and rise to cultural prominence to the continued effects on popular culture today.
HERE, THERE BE DRAGONS.
Ancient red dragons with 527 hit points, +44 to attack, and a 20d10 breath weapon, to be specific. In the world of fantasy role-playing, those numbers describe a winged serpent with immense strength and the ability to spit fire. There are few beasts more powerful—just like there are few games more important than Dungeons & Dragons.
Even if you’ve never played Dungeons & Dragons, you probably know someone who…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
In the 1980s I was bullied for playing Dungeons and Dragons. Kids like to bully each other, but this was different: The bullies felt they had been given a moral license to pick on D&D players because pastors, talk-show hosts, and politicians were all claiming it was a Satanic, anti-Christian game. Those claims were my first inkling that adults did not know what they are talking about. After getting a PhD in the sociology of religion, I was finally able analyze and articulate why religious authorities felt threatened by a simple game of imagination.
This book is an exploration of “geek culture” including Dungeons and Dragons but also other aspects of fandom like live-action-role-playing (LARPing), and Harry Potter fandom.
This is not a theoretically weighty book, but the author did substantial field work trying to explore and understand these subcultures. The throughline of the book concerns the human fascination with imaginary realms and the cultural forms people will invent to connect with these realms and bring them to life. As a religious studies scholar, I see this longing for other worlds as a “religious” impulse.
An amazing journey through the thriving worlds of fantasy and gaming What could one man find if he embarked on a journey through fantasy world after fantasy world? In an enthralling blend of travelogue, pop culture analysis, and memoir, forty-year-old former D&D addict Ethan Gilsdorf crisscrosses America, the world, and other worlds-from Boston to New Zealand, and Planet Earth to the realm of Aggramar. "For anyone who has ever spent time within imaginary realms, the book will speak volumes. For those who have not, it will educate and enlighten." -Wired.com "Gandalf's got nothing on Ethan Gilsdorf, except for maybe the…
I have had two careers and two lives. Beginning as a historian of American culture, I
have become a writer of fiction. That I have turned to fiction now is because I have so many of my
own stories to explore and relate. And what I love most about writing novels and the
short pieces I compose is the possibility to create living characters who sometimes
surprise me with what they believe and do, but always, I know, emerge from the very
deepest corners of my imagination and the issues that I feel compelled to examine and
resolve.
I love this novel for its ability to describe a very small world as if it were the most important place in the universe. It captures perfectly the way in which people, visited by enormous tragedy, are able to reconstruct lives that are full of richness and humor.
Tragic, comic, and utterly honest, this bestselling and critically acclaimed work is at once a family saga and a magical self-portrait of a writer who witnessed the birth of a nation and lived through its turbulent history. It is the story of a boy growing up in the war-torn Jerusalem of the forties and fifties, in a small apartment crowded with books in twelve languages and relatives speaking nearly as many. The story of an adolescent whose life has been changed forever by his mother's suicide when he was twelve years old. The story of a man who leaves the…
Growing up in a Kentucky coal-mining community, I enjoyed reading about the lives of other people and how their experiences differed from mine. I read biographies of famous people, such as Paul Revere or Stephen Foster, and an occasional memoir, such as Harlan Ellison writing about infiltrating a juvenile gang or David Gerrold revealing how he came to write forStar Trek. Fiction also took me to places that I had never seen. But something about a coming-of-age tale especially resonated with me and I hope these recommendations will help you make that same connection with how others have navigated the magic and miseries of childhood.
Gary Paulsen is best known for his novels for young people, such as the popular Hatchet, but this R-rated memoir is aimed at an adult audience. Of my five recommendations, this one is far and away the most representative of the miseries of a dysfunctional childhood. Paulsen’s parents were both alcoholics, and his mother had affairs that she could have done a much better job of hiding from her young son. Somehow, despite the trauma (or maybe because of it), Paulsen emerged as a successful and extraordinarily prolific writer. For those of us with wonderful childhood memories, this book serves as a reminder that not everyone is so lucky.
This work describes the author's experiences as a child during World War II. Along with his mother, who is alternatively protective and selfishly neglectful, Paulsen travelled to the Philippines to live with his father, a distant and imperious army officer.
Meet Lev Gleason, a real-life comics superhero! Gleason was a titan among Golden Age comics publishers who fought back against the censorship campaigns and paranoia of the Red Scare. After dropping out of Harvard to fight in World War I in France, Gleason moved to New York City and eventually…
As a primary head teacher, then literacy consultant, I wrote many books about education but at the age of 50 I changed tack. A meeting with a researcher who’d discovered an alarming decline in young children’s listening skills led to eight years’ research on the effects of modern lifestyles on children’s development. It involved many interviews with experts on diet, sleep, play, language, family life, childcare, education, screen-time, marketing influences and parenting styles – and a great deal of reading. By the time Toxic Childhood was first published in 2006 I’d realised that, in a 21st century culture, society should be paying far more attention to child development, especially in the early years. I hope to go on spreading that message until my dying breath.
Postman was a hugely erudite and witty writer. When I discovered this book in the 1990s, I was immediately convinced by his argument that our modern conception of ‘childhood’ is connected with the invention of the printing press … and with human progress over succeeding centuries. I was just as convinced by his concern that the recent explosion of screen-based culture would have profound effects on childhood and, indeed, on the quality of human thought. I’m therefore deeply honoured that Toxic Childhood is now on an ‘A’ Level Sociology syllabus alongside The Disappearance of Childhood – can’t believe that we’re sitting on the same shelf!
From the vogue for nubile models to the explosion in the juvenile crime rate, this modern classic of social history and media traces the precipitous decline of childhood in America today−and the corresponding threat to the notion of adulthood.
Deftly marshaling a vast array of historical and demographic research, Neil Postman, author of Technopoly, suggests that childhood is a relatively recent invention, which came into being as the new medium of print imposed divisions between children and adults. But now these divisions are eroding under the barrage of television, which turns the adult secrets of sex and violence into popular…
I’m a lifelong video game obsessive. I think about video game worlds and my relationship with them in the ways most people think about family vacations to the beach or a trip with friends to Las Vegas. Every game I play is an opportunity to experience a new world, and a new culture, and to change myself along the way. Video games are a younger industry than either the music industry or the movie industry, but it’s more than 2.5x bigger than those two industries combined! There are reasons humans are so enamored by video games. The books on my list explore those reasons.
Where David Sudnow’s Breakout: Pilgrim in the Microworld focused on the flamboyant poetry of gaming, Michael W. Clune’s Gamelife opts for minimalism.
Clune himself describes the book as a memoir about computer games, which is true, and that description alone warrants inclusion in my list. Why? Any topic that can be a lens through which to reflect on one’s own life is noteworthy.
Clune isn’t a game developer recounting a life spent developing games. Clune isn’t a games industry executive doling out business advice. Clune is a gamer with a childhood he’s able to better understand when filtered through video games.
Tell your non-gaming friends: video games are therapy!
In telling the story of his youth through seven computer games, critically acclaimed author Michael W. Clune (White Out) captures the part of childhood we live alone.
You have been awakened.
Floppy disk inserted, computer turned on, a whirring, and then this sentence, followed by a blinking cursor. So begins Suspended, the first computer game to obsess seven-year-old Michael, to worm into his head and change his sense of reality. Thirty years later he will write: "Computer games have taught me the things you can't learn from people."
Gamelife is the memoir of a childhood transformed by technology. Afternoons spent…
I’m an economist fascinated by the ways that early opportunities shape lifelong success. My interests go way back to the big public schools I attended in Southern California, where I watched some kids benefit from tutoring, counseling, coaching, and other private resources that most kids couldn’t access. I went on to get a PhD in economics, then taught at Brown University and advised Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign on child development policy. After years of research and teaching – and becoming a dad myself – I wrote The Parent Trap to expose the monumental challenges facing so many parents and the solutions most likely to make a difference.
This is one of the best books ever written about anything! It’s a classic that remains underappreciated even after its big role in Outliersby Malcolm Gladwell. First, it’s entertaining. The author’s team got to know dozens of white-collar and working-class families up close. They lived in these families’ homes. They slept over, watched TV, and brushed their teeth with them; accompanied them to supermarkets, doctor’s appointments, and parent-teacher conferences. It’s crazy! After reading this book it seems impossible to believe that advantageous parenting (1) doesn’t matter all that much or (2) is something “anyone can do if they put their mind to it.” In an appendix Lareau describes what a monumental, stressful, and awkward undertaking it was to observe people like specimens in every aspect of their private lives.
Class does make a difference in the lives and futures of American children. Drawing on in-depth observations of black and white middle-class, working-class, and poor families, "Unequal Childhoods" explores this fact, offering a picture of childhood today. Here are the frenetic families managing their children's hectic schedules of 'leisure' activities; and here are families with plenty of time but little economic security. Lareau shows how middle-class parents, whether black or white, engage in a process of 'concerted cultivation' designed to draw out children's talents and skills, while working-class and poor families rely on 'the accomplishment of natural growth', in which…
This memoir chronicles the lives of three generations of women with a passion for reading, writing, and travel. The story begins in 1992 in an unfinished attic in Brooklyn as the author reads a notebook written by her grandmother nearly 100 years earlier. This sets her on a 30-year search…
My author friend, Mary, brought her great, great, great + grandfather’s journal to our writers' group and shared excerpts from the pages written in the 1800s. When her grandfather was window shopping in downtown London, he peered into the bookstore window. He yearned to own the books on display, but he couldn’t afford them on a minister’s income. Only the rich could purchase books. The journal excerpts brought the 1800s to life. I decided then to begin recording my life experiences to make our lives today real for the generations of tomorrow. I share my enthusiasm for telling life stories by presenting workshops on how to write life stories.
Put on your flowered shirt and place a flower in your hair to be taken away to the beautiful island of Samoa. This page-turning memoir chronicles the author’s struggles with adolescence against the backdrop of a changing Samoan culture. With lyrical language, Ms. Pokerwinski paints true-to-life scenes of the island and the Samoan people. The situations and the fascinating characters will keep you reading. I thoroughly enjoyed reliving memories of the 60s such as the music of the Beach Boys, White Rain Conditioner, and Tangee lipstick. If you witnessed life in the 60s, you will identify with the author and enjoy her humor and sass.
Moving to a South Pacific island from small town Oklahoma, sixteen year old Nancy Sanders trades cruising Main Street in search of tater tots for strolling sandy shores with islanders who feast on sea worms and summon sharks with song.
With a dash of teenage sass, MANGO RASH chronicles Nancy's search for adventure—and identity—in two alien realms: the tricky terrain of adolescence and the remote U.S. territory of American Samoa. Against a backdrop of lava-rimmed beaches, frangipani-laced air, and sensual music, Nancy immerses herself in 1960s island culture with a colorful cast of Samoan and American expat kids.
