93 books like The Game Believes in You

By Greg Toppo,

Here are 93 books that The Game Believes in You fans have personally recommended if you like The Game Believes in You. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered The World

Harold Goldberg Author Of All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture

From my list on video game narrative histories.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author/journalist Harold Goldberg has written about video games since the 1990s. He is the author of All Your Base Are Belong to Us (How 50 Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture) and The League of Legends Experience. He is the founder of the non-profit New York Videogame Critics Circle and The New York Game Awards, both of which raise funds for essential classes and scholarships in New York City's underserved communities. As editor in chief of Sony Online Entertainment, he worked on Star Wars Galaxies and EverQuest. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Wired, and elsewhere. Goldberg also co-wrote My Life Among The Serial Killers with Dr. Helen Morrison. 

Harold's book list on video game narrative histories

Harold Goldberg Why did Harold love this book?

Sheff's 1994 story is still the most incisive narrative history of Nintendo. It's full of all the ups and downs you expect in a process-oriented tome. But it also has soul, delivered by the wonder-filled mind of Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of the Mario and the Legend Of Zelda series. Today, no journalist could ever get inside Nintendo, which is as closed off to its inner workings as Apple is. But Sheff got inside, way inside, and every reader is the better for it.

By David Sheff,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Game Over as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

With annual sales of $4.7 billion in the US alone, Nintendo dominates the worldwide market for video games and Mario, the company mascot, has become more familiar to children than Mickey Mouse. Far more profitable than IBM, Apple or Microsoft, Nintendo has become - in less than a decade - one of the most successful high technology companies in the world. This book looks at the policies and practices of Nintendo and its future in computer technology.


Book cover of The Ultimate History of Video Games, Vol. 1

Harold Goldberg Author Of All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture

From my list on video game narrative histories.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author/journalist Harold Goldberg has written about video games since the 1990s. He is the author of All Your Base Are Belong to Us (How 50 Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture) and The League of Legends Experience. He is the founder of the non-profit New York Videogame Critics Circle and The New York Game Awards, both of which raise funds for essential classes and scholarships in New York City's underserved communities. As editor in chief of Sony Online Entertainment, he worked on Star Wars Galaxies and EverQuest. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Wired, and elsewhere. Goldberg also co-wrote My Life Among The Serial Killers with Dr. Helen Morrison. 

Harold's book list on video game narrative histories

Harold Goldberg Why did Harold love this book?

Steve's sprawlingly wonderful book is not only an essential (and the first) oral history of video games' early years. The author takes you inside the minds of the (mainly) white men who pioneered a form of entertainment media that's now bigger than all forms of popular art combined. Just as it makes you think of the brilliance of these slick hucksters and brainy engineers who created a new form of culture, it makes you think that games would have benefitted greatly from more diversity back then - and now.

By Steven L. Kent,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Ultimate History of Video Games, Vol. 1 as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The definitive behind-the-scenes history of the dawn of video games and their rise into a multibillion-dollar business
 
“For industry insiders and game players alike, this book is a must-have.”—Mark Turmell, designer for Midway Games and creator of NBA Jam, NFL Blitz, and WrestleMania
 
With all the whiz, bang, pop, and shimmer of a glowing arcade, volume 1 of The Ultimate History of Video Games reveals everything you ever wanted to know and more about the unforgettable games that changed the world, the visionaries who made them, and the fanatics who played them. Starting in arcades then moving to televisions and…


Book cover of Fun, Taste, & Games: An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful

Harold Goldberg Author Of All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture

From my list on video game narrative histories.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author/journalist Harold Goldberg has written about video games since the 1990s. He is the author of All Your Base Are Belong to Us (How 50 Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture) and The League of Legends Experience. He is the founder of the non-profit New York Videogame Critics Circle and The New York Game Awards, both of which raise funds for essential classes and scholarships in New York City's underserved communities. As editor in chief of Sony Online Entertainment, he worked on Star Wars Galaxies and EverQuest. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Wired, and elsewhere. Goldberg also co-wrote My Life Among The Serial Killers with Dr. Helen Morrison. 

Harold's book list on video game narrative histories

Harold Goldberg Why did Harold love this book?

This under-appreciated book by two professors revolves around theories of play, why we play games, how we play them, and what it all means to the world. As they look at everything from Meow Wolf's exhibitions to Monopoly to Myst to Portal, they see that as beauty was to art, fun is to play and games. The work begins as they quote Gombrich, who says "The idea of fun is even more unpopular among us than the notion of beauty." Each of these chapters, as they roll together as one, magically juggle the varied theories of games as art and games as purely play.

By John Sharp, David Thomas,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fun, Taste, & Games as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Reclaiming fun as a meaningful concept for understanding games and play.

“Fun” is somewhat ambiguous. If something is fun, is it pleasant? Entertaining? Silly? A way to trick students into learning? Fun also has baggage—it seems inconsequential, embarrassing, child's play. In Fun, Taste, & Games, John Sharp and David Thomas reclaim fun as a productive and meaningful tool for understanding and appreciating play and games. They position fun at the heart of the aesthetics of games. As beauty was to art, they argue, fun is to play and games—the aesthetic goal that we measure our experiences and interpretations against.

Sharp…


Book cover of Playstation Anthology

Harold Goldberg Author Of All Your Base Are Belong to Us: How Fifty Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture

From my list on video game narrative histories.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author/journalist Harold Goldberg has written about video games since the 1990s. He is the author of All Your Base Are Belong to Us (How 50 Years of Videogames Conquered Pop Culture) and The League of Legends Experience. He is the founder of the non-profit New York Videogame Critics Circle and The New York Game Awards, both of which raise funds for essential classes and scholarships in New York City's underserved communities. As editor in chief of Sony Online Entertainment, he worked on Star Wars Galaxies and EverQuest. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Wired, and elsewhere. Goldberg also co-wrote My Life Among The Serial Killers with Dr. Helen Morrison. 

Harold's book list on video game narrative histories

Harold Goldberg Why did Harold love this book?

No one's written the perfect history of the PlayStation. But this illustration-rife, Kickstarted book for fans details the secrets of Sony's history with consoles, including rare photos of collectibles and decent interviews of 26 of the key developers, like PaRappa The Rapper co-creator Rodney Alan Greenblatt and Crash Bandicoot co-creator Jason Rubin. Yes, they could have included interviews with key U.S execs like Andrew House and Mark Cerny. Still, it works. Dimension-wise, the book's not large enough to be a coffee table book. But that's what it feels like, and an indispensable one at that.

By Mathieu Manent,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Playstation Anthology as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

To celebrate a console that brought wonder into the lives of so many, and a brand that reshaped the whole entertainment industry, the authors retrace Sony's incredible journey, from the company's creation following World War II, to the machine's retirement in the early 2000's. Throughout the 26 interviews, important figures of the period recount their experiences with unabashed honesty, painting a detailed picture of the great venture led by Ken Kutaragi. Much like the Nintendo 64 Anthology, the PlayStation Anthology is unique in both form and content. To fully appreciate the scale of the PlayStation phenomenon, you first have to…


Book cover of Screen Schooled: Two Veteran Teachers Expose How Technology Overuse Is Making Our Kids Dumber

Victoria Dunckley Author Of Reset Your Child's Brain: A Four-Week Plan to End Meltdowns, Raise Grades, and Boost Social Skills by Reversing the Effects of Electronic Screen

From my list on effects of screen time on kids on neuroscience.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am an integrative child psychiatrist with a special focus on how screen-time detunes the nervous system, causing issues with sleep, mood, focus, and behavior. In fact, technology use is the most underestimated influence of our time; it causes problems whose connections aren’t always obvious, leads to misdiagnosis and overmedication, and wastes resources. I am passionate about helping children and families methodically reverse these changes using screen fast protocols that provide dramatic improvements in functioning and well-being. I speak regularly to parents’ groups, schools, and health providers, and my work has been featured on such outlets as NPR, CNN, NBC Nightly News, Psychology Today, and Good Morning America.

Victoria's book list on effects of screen time on kids on neuroscience

Victoria Dunckley Why did Victoria love this book?

I found myself wanting to stand up and applaud while reading this book. The description of what a kid really does on a typical day at school is alone worth the purchase (and will make you laugh... and then heave a deep sigh.) But more importantly, these two teachers outline the pitfalls our digitally-driven world has created in terms of education, deep thinking, social responsibility, and ability to problem solve. As someone who has done a lot of research into the “screens in school” topic, I found this book to be thorough and clear, and written with enough humor to make a tough topic palatable. 

By Joe Clement, Matt Miles,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Screen Schooled as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Over the past decade, educational instruction has become increasingly digitized as districts rush to dole out laptops and iPads to every student. Yet the most important question, “Is this what is best for students?” is glossed over. Veteran teachers Joe Clement and Matt Miles have seen firsthand how damaging technology overuse and misuse has been to our kids. On a mission to educate and empower parents, they show how screen saturation at home and school has created a wide range of cognitive and social deficits in our young people. They lift the veil on what’s really going on in schools:…


Book cover of Children and Families in the Digital Age: Learning Together in a Media Saturated Culture

Sonia M. Livingstone Author Of Parenting for a Digital Future: How Hopes and Fears about Technology Shape Children's Lives

From my list on children and parents in the digital age.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve researched children’s digital lives since the internet first arrived in many people’s homes. Recently, I noticed parents’ concerns weren’t listened to – mostly, researchers interview parents to find out about their children rather than about parents themselves. Worse, policymakers often make decisions that affect parents without consulting them. So, in Parenting for a Digital Future we focused on parents, following my previous books on Children and the Internet and The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age. As a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, I love that moment of knocking on a family’s door, and am always curious to see what I will find!

Sonia's book list on children and parents in the digital age

Sonia M. Livingstone Why did Sonia love this book?

As a researcher, I’m always looking out for fresh ways to approach familiar problems.

Three problems really bother me. One is the idea of reducing all the different types of media, and all the different ways families use media, to a simplistic formula – screen time. As if we could just measure screen time, reduce it by turning parents into screen time police, and thereby solve the problems of our digital age.

Another is the idea of seeing parents as having all the power and children as willful or ignorant or naughty and so needing to be controlled. As if families weren’t trying to be more democratic and as if parents had nothing to learn from their children. The third is the idea that families have got to work all this out on their own, as if digital innovators and the wider society weren’t in some ways part of the…

By Elisabeth Gee (editor), Lori Takeuchi (editor), Ellen Wartella (editor)

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Children and Families in the Digital Age as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Children and Families in the Digital Age offers a fresh, nuanced, and empirically-based perspective on how families are using digital media to enhance learning, routines, and relationships. This powerful edited collection contributes to a growing body of work suggesting the importance of understanding how the consequences of digital media use are shaped by family culture, values, practices, and the larger social and economic contexts of families' lives. Chapters offer case studies, real-life examples, and analyses of large-scale national survey data, and provide insights into previously unexplored topics such as the role of siblings in shaping the home media ecology.


Book cover of The Race between Education and Technology

Jonathan Rothwell Author Of A Republic of Equals: A Manifesto for a Just Society

From my list on why some people tend to be richer or poorer.

Why am I passionate about this?

Inequality and fairness are basic issues in human conflict and cooperation that have long fascinated me. Growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, I was confronted with the extreme racial segregation of schools and neighborhoods. My Catholic upbringing taught me to cherish the cardinal virtues of justice, wisdom, courage, and temperance, and my education in political economy taught me that markets can fairly and efficiently allocate resources, when legal power is evenly shared. My formal education culminated in a Ph.D. in Public Affairs from Princeton University, which led me to my current roles: Non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and Principal Economist at Gallup. I care deeply about the social conditions that create cooperation and conflict.

Jonathan's book list on why some people tend to be richer or poorer

Jonathan Rothwell Why did Jonathan love this book?

To understand why some workers are paid more than others, you have to understand how skills are valued and rewarded in the labor market, and how that has changed, as the economy has evolved.

Focused on the United States, Katz and Goldin provide a sweeping overview of how education leads to skills and income, drawing on the most well-established theories in economics. It misses some important causes of inequality, but is essential for understanding the one of the deepest economic forces governing wages: the supply and demand of human capital.

By Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Race between Education and Technology as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This book provides a careful historical analysis of the co-evolution of educational attainment and the wage structure in the United States through the twentieth century. The authors propose that the twentieth century was not only the American Century but also the Human Capital Century. That is, the American educational system is what made America the richest nation in the world. Its educational system had always been less elite than that of most European nations. By 1900 the U.S. had begun to educate its masses at the secondary level, not just in the primary schools that had remarkable success in the…


Book cover of More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave

Carroll Pursell Author Of The Machine in America: A Social History of Technology

From my list on technology interacting with American society.

Why am I passionate about this?

I've been teaching and writing in the field of the history of technology for over six decades, and it's not too much to say that the field and my professional career grew up together. The Society for the History of Technology began in 1958, and its journal, Technology and Culture, first appeared the following year. I've watched, and helped encourage, a broadening of the subject from a rather internal concentration on machines and engineering to a widening interest in technology as a social activity with cultural and political, as well as economic, outcomes. In my classes I always assigned not only original documents and scholarly monographs but also memoirs, literature, and films.

Carroll's book list on technology interacting with American society

Carroll Pursell Why did Carroll love this book?

It is hardly news that housework is gendered. But in this classic study Cowan, by taking housewifery seriously as work and kitchen utensils and appliances seriously as technologies, opens up the whole panorama of production and consumption in a domestic setting. The influx of new appliances, and in a more convenient form old materials (such as powdered soap) in the early decades of the 20th century worked to, in a sense, “industrialize” the home. Unlike factory workers, however, housewives were unpaid, isolated, and unspecialized. Their managerial role shrank (hired help disappeared from most homes)  and rather than being drained of meaning, like the work of factory hands, theirs became burdened with portentous implications of love, devotion, and creativity. Finally, as housework became “easy,” standards rose. At one time changing the bed might have amounted to putting the bottom sheet in the wash and the top sheet on the bottom,…

By Ruth Schwartz Cowan,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked More Work for Mother as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this classic work of women's history (winner of the 1984 Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology), Ruth Schwartz Cowan shows how and why modern women devote as much time to housework as did their colonial sisters. In lively and provocative prose, Cowan explains how the modern conveniences,washing machines, white flour, vacuums, commercial cotton,seemed at first to offer working-class women middle-class standards of comfort. Over time, however, it became clear that these gadgets and gizmos mainly replaced work previously conducted by men, children, and servants. Instead of living lives of leisure, middle-class women found themselves struggling…


Book cover of How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going

Peter A. Victor Author Of Escape from Overshoot: Economics for a Planet in Peril

From my list on how to transition to a post growth society.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have worked all my adult life trying to understand the implications of the insight that the economy depends on the environment for all its materials, energy, and assimilation of all its wastes. What began as academic curiosity developed into concern about the urgency of a transition to a post-growth economy, especially in rich countries. Justice requires that those most responsible for ecological overshoot reduce their demands on nature furthest and fastest so that those least responsible but suffering the worst consequences can also flourish. I hope you find the books I have chosen will help you take informed action to bring about the transition to a post-growth society.

Peter's book list on how to transition to a post growth society

Peter A. Victor Why did Peter love this book?

My understanding of how the world works has been greatly influenced by my study of economics. However, economists often make overly optimistic assumptions about technology and resources that are not grounded in fact and experience.

Smil's book on how the world really works is a powerful antidote to the wishful thinking of those, not just economists, who believe that technology will solve the problems of overshoot, poverty, inequality, conflict, and whatever else may be ailing us.

I love Smil's grasp of physical, biological, and technological fundamentals and his ability to communicate his wisdom about how the world really works simply and with conviction.   

By Vaclav Smil,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked How the World Really Works as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil' Bill Gates
__________

We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don't know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our material world and its globalization, to risks, our environment and its future, How the World Really Works offers a much-needed reality check - because before we can tackle problems effectively, we must understand the facts.

In this ambitious and thought-provoking…


Book cover of A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming

Steve M. Easterbrook Author Of Computing the Climate: How We Know What We Know About Climate Change

From my list on how scientists discovered global warming threat.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a university professor with a deep interest in the systems that shape our lives. In my previous job, I led a research team at NASA, studying software safety for the space shuttle and International Space Station. But after my kids were born, I started thinking about how climate change would affect their future, and I decided to switch my research to investigate how the computer models used to predict future climate change are developed and tested and how much we can trust their predictions. That was more than twenty years ago. I’ve been working on climate change problems ever since, and I’m keen to share what I’ve learned.

Steve's book list on how scientists discovered global warming threat

Steve M. Easterbrook Why did Steve love this book?

This was the first (and still the best) book I ever read on how scientists collect and use the data for forecasting the weather and predicting climate change. I am particularly impressed with its scope–it starts with early attempts by 17th and 18th-century scientists to agree on how to measure things like wind and rainfall and ends with today’s world of satellites and computer models.

The book really brings alive the work of a massive network of scientists around the world collecting and analyzing observations about planet Earth.

By Paul N. Edwards,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Vast Machine as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The science behind global warming, and its history: how scientists learned to understand the atmosphere, to measure it, to trace its past, and to model its future.

Global warming skeptics often fall back on the argument that the scientific case for global warming is all model predictions, nothing but simulation; they warn us that we need to wait for real data, “sound science.” In A Vast Machine Paul Edwards has news for these skeptics: without models, there are no data. Today, no collection of signals or observations—even from satellites, which can “see” the whole planet with a single instrument—becomes global…


Book cover of Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered The World
Book cover of The Ultimate History of Video Games, Vol. 1
Book cover of Fun, Taste, & Games: An Aesthetics of the Idle, Unproductive, and Otherwise Playful

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