It’s All A Game, by Tristan Donovan

January 27, 2025 Lark_Bookwyrm Book Reviews 3 ★★★★

It's All a Game: The History of Board Games from Monoply to Settlers of Catan by Tristan Donovan
Published by Thomas Dunne Books Genres: History, Nonfiction
Pages: 303
Format: Kindle or ebook
Source: my personal collection
Purchase: Amazon | Bookshop | Barnes & Noble
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four-stars

Board games have been with us longer than even the written word. But what is it about this pastime that continues to captivate us well into the age of smartphones and instant gratification?

In It’s All a Game, British journalist and renowned games expert Tristan Donovan opens the box on the incredible and often surprising history and psychology of board games. He traces the evolution of the game across cultures, time periods, and continents, from the paranoid Chicago toy genius behind classics like Operation and Mouse Trap, to the role of Monopoly in helping prisoners of war escape the Nazis, and even the scientific use of board games today to teach artificial intelligence how to reason and how to win. With these compelling stories and characters, Donovan ultimately reveals why board games have captured hearts and minds all over the world for generations.

The History of Board Games from Monopoly to Settlers of Cataan

Contrary to the subtitle, It’s All a Game actually starts much earlier than Monopoly, beginning with ancient games like senet (Egyptian), the “royal game of Ur”, and the many forms of mancala (Africa and the Middle East), then delves into a truncated history of chess before moving on to the board games most of us are familiar with: backgammon, Life, Monopoly, Risk, Scrabble, Trivial Pursuit, and so on. The history of many of the games and their designers is full of interesting anecdotes and quirky figures, and Donovan’s breezy style and journalistic flair make It’s All a Game a quick and entertaining read.

After focusing on the well-known canon, Donovan takes a look at the growth of more complex board games in Europe, as well as at various attempts to teach computers to play strategy games. (The attempt to create a world-class AI chess champion was eventually successful; an AI go champion took longer, but not by much.) I would have enjoyed a bit more about the explosion of European-style board games in the US in the past 15 years, but since the book was released in 2017, it misses out on some of the exciting newer games like Wingspan (and its recent cousin, Wyrmspan, released just last year.) Donovan also leaves out or barely mentions some of my childhood favorites, like Candy Land and Parcheesi. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and I now have a number of interesting bits of game-history trivia stored up in my brain.

Challenges: Since I finished the book on Jan. 1, 2025, I guess it technically counts toward last year’s COYER Unwind, Chapt. 4.