What are you playing?

Clare, Tim.  Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human.  New York: Abrams Press, 2025.

       ISBN: 9781419780561

 

 

Do you play games?  In a different time did you play games?  If so, then this book is for you!  In Across the Board, Tim Clare talks about what makes board games or table games so universal and yet so unique.  

Tim Clare starts off by defining what a game is.  He then sets out a list of the sort of games he will discuss -chess, Monopoly, Game of Life, card games such as poker or Uno, and role-playing games such as dungeons & Dragons.  And yes, he does delve into philosophy at times.  

In fourteen chapters, Clare covers a wide swath of game types.  "Dicing with Death" opens with several cases of folks in Sweden rolling dice to see who would live and who would die.  The rest of the chapter talks about the long history of dice games.  Another chapter - "To Ur is Human" - deals with the various games Sir Leonard Woolley found when excavating a tomb at Ur in Iraq in the 1920s.  The rules for the game were discovered in the 1980s by Dr. Irving Finkel.  Buddha and his ant-gaming sermon gets mentioned in regard to dice games.  In the "Goose Gets Stuffed" Clare discusses how games seem to go in cycles through out history when the comparison of medieval Stuff the Goose being very similar in concept to the ancient Egyptian Mehen game.  There is an obligatory chapter on Monopoly which delves into the sordid history of the game and chapters on card games of all types.  One of those card games has the players hunting for lines of Japanese poetry.  Then there is Magic: The Gathering and Pokemon card games.  There is a chapter on Mancala - the bean game which is played in Africa and across the Pacific Ocean.  Of course chess, checkers, and the like are covered.  Then there are the role-playing chapters, both those done with a board and the live action variety.  In the final chapter, Clare lets the reader in on his secret - he wrote Across the Board to figure out why he loves playing and collecting games.  

So if you enjoy games, or just enjoy finding out the history of something, pick up Across the Board and find find out what makes you human!   You will enjoy the trip!