However, even Monopoly was invented at some point in the recent past. In fact, I don’t think it needs such an introduction since it is such a familiar thing to me. It is also World Famous and the game with the most units sold. If nothing else, you'll at least learn some interesting facts to tuck away to impress your friends during your next game of Monopoly. Still, the book does pick up pace once it gets into the publishing of the first, and subsequent, editions of Monopoly, as well as its battles in court, its historians, its world championships, and its enduring appeal on the American landscape.Īll in all, this book should appeal to anyone who's wondered how such a timeless game like Monopoly evolved over time. Its not without slow parts though, particularly in some of the early history of the pre-Monopoly era - which, is understandable, as most people who read this book will be interested in Monopoly, the game, and not any of its spritual predecessors. The book is authored by a former SVP of Parker Brothers, and is clearly meticulously researched (just take a gander at any one of the 10 appendices for evidence), and it's obvious that Orbanes has a love for the game. None of them really took off, and it took a series of seemingly random events and people to really make Monopoly, the game, work. There were numerous incarnations of money/property related games that all had the intention of imparting on the player a sense of what it takes and what it's like to own property and to effectively manage real estate. What makes Monopoly, the book, interesting is to read about life before Monopoly, the game. I've read many of these types of books (salt, coffee, etc), and I always enjoy seeking them out. Basically, the biography of a singular item. Monopoly is another one of those books that I really love reading, as it falls into the category otherwise known as "monohistories". This book is not endorsed by Hasbro Games This is the first and only book to cover comprehensively the origin, growth, and global impact of the game that has become a cultural icon. Orbanes includes fascinating Monopoly personality portraits, little-known Monopoly legends and lore, and the extraordinary variety of advertising used throughout the twentieth century. But while Monopoly has global appeal, it is distinctly American-a symbol of America's system of economic "opportunity." In America's Game, Philip Orbanes, the leading expert on all things Monopoliana, tells the remarkable history of the game, from its predecessor's birth as a teaching tool for an economics class in the first decade of the twentieth century through its explosive growth in the postwar decades to it being a ubiquitous fixture in just about every American home today. Countless special and national editions of the game are now published in over sixty countries. Over 200,000,000 copies of the Monopoly(r) game have been sold worldwide since Parker Brothers first popularized it in 1935, making it the world's most popular proprietary game.
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