With
great wit and insight, Tim Clare--writer,
poet, and podcaster--presents a playful, in-depth examination into the
foundational appeal of board games throughout the ages.
Games offer fun entertainment and also train people to better navigate
human relationships and the ups and downs of life. According to philosopher C.
Thi Nyugen, games also offer a “motivational inversion of ordinary life,” encouraging
alternate modes of behavior. People become freed of socialized constraints and
commonplace rules of life are suspended, along with expectations about how to
behave. This deviation becomes a welcome
subversion—as it has for centuries.
Clare’s thoroughly researched narrative demonstrates how, in every
civilization of human history, board games have built and changed the world. People
have been using tablets as boards, rolling dice, and moving little tokens,
including dog and pig pieces, dating back five millennia as was unearthed in an
archeological dig in Turkey. An excavated Egyptian grave from 3800-3500 BCE
uncovered a gaming board and cube pieces—apparently placed there for the
deceased’s amusement in the afterlife. And a thousand years later, the
long-known Game of Ur was said to be introduced around the time of Jesus
Christ. In China, circa 221-206 BCE, dice were even used to “gamble and plumb
the mysteries of fate” as evidenced via diviner’s boards used via I-Ching.
The history is long and fascinates. Clare, a self-proclaimed “nerdy
enthusiast” who has always held great affection for tabletop games,
passionately shows the many ways they bridge the gap between worlds and people. From
early childhood to senior years, game playing pervades places from pubs to
casinos, schools to care homes. Nowadays, games even proliferate via smartphone
apps. Through in-depth, well-organized chapters, Clare analyzes historical,
sociological, and psychological aspects and delves into the nuances of a
wide-array of examples from checkers to tic-tac-toe, chess to Uno, Monopoly to
Pokémon.
Clare (The Ice House, Coward) firmly believes that games grant people permission to “step out of the swirling, intimidating confusion of reality into something…more manageable.” Thanks to the richly entertaining history and ideas put forth by Clare, game aficionados and readers alike will be enchantingly transported by this narrative that offers another enriching avenue of pleasurable escape from life.
Across
the Board: How Games Make Us Human by Tim Clare
Abrams Press,
$28.00 hardcover, 9781419780561, 240 pages
Publication
Date: May 6, 2025
To
order this book on Bookshop.org link HERE
Link HERE to learn more about author Tim
Clare