Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master: Pong, Atari, and the Dawn of the Video Game
graphic-nonfiction · First published 2022
Author guide
David Kushner Books in Order
David Kushner is an award-winning journalist and author whose work has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, Outside, New York, GQ, and Business Insider. He has written nonfiction books, memoir, reported history, graphic nonfiction, and collections of magazine journalism. He has taught journalism at Princeton University and New York University, and his writing has been adapted for film, television, podcasts, and audio drama.
nonfictionjournalismbiographyhistorymemoirgraphic nonfictiontechnology
Catalog record updated .
David Kushner's Newest Book
Not sure where to begin?
Start with one of these
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
The best general introduction to Kushner's reported nonfiction and his interest in technology and popular culture.
Alligator Candy: A Memoir
The clearest entry point to his memoir and personal nonfiction.
Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D
A concise entry point to his graphic nonfiction about gaming history.
Outside the series
Bibliography by category
Novels (7)
- Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
nonfiction · 2003
"To my taste, the greatest American myth of cosmogenesis features the maladjusted, antisocial, genius teenage boy who, in the insular laboratory of his own bedroom, invents the universe from scratch. Masters of Doom is a particularly…
- Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto
nonfiction · 2012
"The book explains how British prep school brothers Sam and Dan Houser took their dream of fame, fortune, and the glamor of American pop culture and transformed it into a worldwide videogame blockbuster. Written by David Kushner, author…
- Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D
graphic-nonfiction · 2017
Rise of the Dungeon Master tells, in graphic form, the story of Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, one of the most influential games ever made. Like the game itself, the narrative casts the reader into the adventure from a…
- The Players Ball: A Genius, a Con Man, and the Secret History of the Internet's Rise
nonfiction · 2019
“An engrossing microcosm of the internet’s Wild West years” (Kirkus Reviews), award-winning journalist David Kushner tells the incredible battle between the founder of Match.com and the con man who swindled him out of the website Sex.com,…
- A for Anonymous: How a Mysterious Hacker Collective Transformed the World
graphic-nonfiction · 2020
The illustrated, inside story of the legendary hacktivist group's origins and most daring exploits. A for Anonymous shows how a leaderless band of volunteers successfully used hacktivism to fight for the underdog, embarrass their rich and…
- Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master: Pong, Atari, and the Dawn of the Video Game
graphic-nonfiction · 2022
Nonfiction (2)
- Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America's Legendary Suburb
history · 2009
Describes how the entrepreneurial Levitt family constructed affordable community homes that were only available to white buyers, recounting how the Wechslers, a white Jewish communist family, secretly arranged for a black family to…
- Alligator Candy: A Memoir
memoir · 2016
From journalist David Kushner, a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and other premiere outlets, Alligator Candy is a reported memoir in the vein of The Night of the Gun about how a family survives an unthinkable…
