Search results for ""author box brown""

It is, perhaps, the perfect video game. Simple yet addictive, Tetris delivers an irresistible, unending puzzle that has players hooked. Play it long enough and you’ll see those brightly coloured geometric shapes everywhere. You’ll see them in your dreams. Alexey Pajitnov had big ideas about games. In 1984, he created Tetris in his spare time while developing software for the Soviet government. Once this alarmingly addictive game emerged from behind the Iron Curtain, it was an instant hit. Nintendo, Atari, Sega – game developers big and small all wanted Tetris. A bidding war was sparked, followed by clandestine trips to Moscow, backroom deals, innumerable miscommunications and outright theft. New York Times bestselling author Box Brown untangles this complex history and delves deep into the role games play in art, culture and commerce. For the first time and in unparalleled detail, Tetris: The Games People Play tells the true story of the world’s most popular video game.

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Tetris is as ubiquitous as blue jeans and as addictive as jelly beans. But did you ever wonder where it came from? Probably not: Most computer programs have fairly undramatic origin stories. Not Tetris. In 1984, Alexey Pajitnov, a computer scientist working for the USSR government, created a fun little game that became a smash hit among the computer literate population of Moscow. Before long, it was discovered by a British software firm. The rest, as they say, is history...But it's a history full of high stakes business shenanigans and some fundamental questions about the nature of play. Box Brown, author of Andre the Giant: Life and Legend, blows open the secret history of the game that saved Nintendo and delves into what makes puzzles and games so irresistible to human beings.

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Comedian and performer Andy Kaufman's resume was impressive-a popular role on the beloved sitcom Taxi, a high-profile stand-up career, and a surprisingly successful stint in professional wrestling. Although he was by all accounts a sensitive and thoughtful person, he's ironically best remembered for his various contemptible personas, which were so committed and so convincing that all but his closest family and friends were completely taken in. Why would someone so gentle-natured and sensitive build an entire career seeking the hatred of his audience? What drives a performer to solicit that reaction? With the same nuance and sympathy with which he approached Andre the Giant in his 2014 biography, graphic novelist Box Brown takes on the complex and often hilarious life of Andy Kaufman.

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In 1518, during his violent colonial campaign, Cortés introduces hemp farming to Mexico. In secret, locals begin cultivating the plant for consumption. Cannabis makes its way to the United States by means of the immigrant labour force. Once the plant has been shared with black labourers in the USA, it doesn’t take long for American lawmakers to decry cannabis as the vice of "inferior races”. Enter an era of propaganda designed to whip up fear amongst the public. Dishonest and discriminatory campaigns, spearheaded by legislators and the press, spread vicious lies about a plant that has been used by humanity for thousands of years. The result: cannabis is given a schedule 1 classification, alongside heroin. In this entertaining and expertly crafted graphic novel, Box Brown offers a rich, persuasive and eye-opening guide to the complex and troubled history of weed in America.

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