The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The title of this review consists of words I don't use too often. But this is a masterpiece that deserved its Pulitzer Prize and then some. What makes Spiegelman's work so moving is the juxtaposition of a supposedly lighthearted form, the comic strip, with the greatest evil and suffering in human history, the Holocaust. Spiegelman's parents miraculously survived the concentration camps, being among very few survivors, getting by on luck and (in the case of Spiegelman's father) a lot of resourcefulness. This is their story, from the point of view of the father, who lost nearly all of his relatives. With the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats, this work pulls no punches in describing the true horrors of the Holocaust, and Spiegelman's minimalist artwork makes the images all the more disturbing. You don't get this kind of emotion, terror, and brutal honesty in standard written accounts of the period. But underneath the direct suffering of the Holocaust, the true theme of this book is the lasting effects on the Spiegelman family, including the father's lasting agony and the mental illness shared by both Spiegelman's mother and himself, who hadn't even been born yet. The strained relationship between father and son are the true heart of this tremendous work. I haven't been this blown away by a work of literature in a very long time, if ever.

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale

At last!Here is the definitive edition of the book acclaimed as "the most affecting and successful narrative ever done about the Holocaust" (Wall Street Journal) and "the first masterpiece in comic book history" (The New Yorker).It now appears as it was originally envisioned by the author: The Complete Maus.It is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist coming to terms with his father's story.Maus approaches the unspeakable through the diminutive.Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), shocks us out of any lingering sense of familiarity and succeeds in "drawing us closer to the bleak heart of the Holocaust" (The New York Times).Maus is a haunting tale within a tale.Vladek's harrowing story of survival is woven into the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father.Against the backdrop of guilt brought by survival, they stage a normal life of small arguments and unhappy visits.This astonishing retelling of our century's grisliest news is a story of survival, not only of Vladek but of the children who survive even the survivors.Maus studies the bloody pawprints of history and tracks its meaning for all of us.

Get 34% OFF

Click here for more information about The Complete Maus: A Survivor's Tale

Read More...

The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon--The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I've been playing video games for 20 years now. I began with the Atari, saw the market crash, grew up with Nintendo, and got caught up in the 90's proliferation of newer and hotter systems. I know a great deal about the industry, yet this book puts my knowledge to shame.
Exhaustively researched and crammed ridiculously full of information, anecdotes, and hundreds of direct quotes from every walk of video game life, this book is worth more than one read-through. My copy is well-worn because I find it so easy to take with me on plane trips and just start reading through at random points. It's written in a very friendly, conversational tone and engages you with its prose. The book is extremely interesting because the author is clearly interested in the subject himself. He manages to get the kind of details and answer the type of questions you'd want to know, yet stays very thorough and accurate throughout.
Loads of different subjects are covered, sometimes at great length: The bar where Pong was first tested. Nintendo's lawsuit against Galoob's Game Genie. Tengen illegally producing Nintendo games and the big N's forceful prosecution. The battles over Donkey Kong and Tetris. The founding of Electronic Arts. Sega's mid 90's dominance and slip of the cd based systems. The furor over Mortal Kombat. School shootings. I can't list enough, and I can't go on enough about it. This book is extremely comprehensive and covers the entire video game industry and all its major players chronologically from the 70s until the turn of the century. It's well-written, accurate (given all those direct insider quotes) and completely objective. One of the best things about it is the fact that it gives details of so many things from my video game youth, such as the first Nintendo commercials, as well as the good old days of parents rampaging through stores for a copy of the "low supply" games. Aside from interesting industry information, this book helped me reminisce.
I've read "Game Over" (the only book comparable to this one on the subject, though it centers on Nintendo), "Phoenix, the Fall and Rise of Videogames, "Masters of Doom", and several other video game books. Honestly, this one still entertains me after four years. Though it ends at about the dawn of the PS2 and Xbox, it covers so much history and gives so many informative, interesting, and humorous stories that it really does deserve the title "Ultimate". Forgive me for not being more objective, but I must shrug and stick to my story. At 500 pages, and with such a wealth of information about so many familiar faces, companies, and games, I just find this to be the best book on the subject without question. Absolutely worth checking out for any video game player.

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon--The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World

Get 32% OFF

Click here for more information about The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon--The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World

Read More...

Geektionary: From Anime to Zettabyte, An A to Z Guide to All Things Geek Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I consider myself a geek. I play Dungeons & Dragons, World of Warcraft, and read comics when I can. I also work in IT, which lends itself to geek culture. I do not live in my mom's basement - and I am not "forever alone" as I have a wife and kid.
I purchased this book because of the recent popularity of geek culture. Geek culture is everywhere now. I feel the idea of an all-encompassing book on geek culture as a whole is an interesting idea. Everyone is a geek these days. I don't mind - I love that the San Diego Comic-Con and movies like The Dark Knight are mainstream. I love that everyone can use an iPhone and Facebook.

While this book does not completely encompass geek culture, it comes close. It does not contain every single subject matter/person/word related to anything geek - it contains subject matters that are interesting. For example, it does not include every comic book character ever created - but it does have the important ones, and some obscure and humorous ones - such as Arm Fall Off Boy.

Although the book contains the must-know information for geek culture - the authors, in many instances, have chosen interesting subject matters over the obvious subject matters - for example, Scott McCloud and his theories on comics are discussed, whereas a comprehensive guide to, say, Spider-man should be found in a more focused source - because everyone knows about Spider-man! The book includes Spider-Man, and The Force - which will be useful to non-geeks - but for me, I need the nitty gritty. It also includes many modern memes and relevant information related to present day geekery, as well as past topics such as 80's cartoons like Thundercats, to early geek periods of D&D, Adam West's Batman, Pong, and information relating to historical geek subjects, such as H.P. Lovecraft.

The book contains interesting topics such as:
-Fictional board games in Science Fiction, such as Star Trek
-History of the High Score in Video Games
-The founder of Apple computers you may not have heard of
-Shout-outs to some of my favorite shows/movies: Dexter, Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Alien, Battle Royale, The Big Lebowski
-Insight into Anime/Manga - I now know how hardcore anime/manga fans are
-World Superhero Registry - a real-life superhero organization
-For those that enjoy hard sci-fi - there are many Niven/Asimov references.
-My favorite sections were the science/computer section and the games section (RPG's, board Games, Video game dynamics). The insights are not necessarily surface level, but more deep such as "Instance Dungeon," pro methods for solving a Rubik's Cube, and Thac0.

Basically - this book is comprehensive. That is just a small sample of the information contained in these pages. I wrote this review because I appreciate geek culture and feel that this book comes very close to including just about every obscure topic a geek could love. And with each subject, there is interesting information presented as well as actually very funny comments/quizzes/usage/and other sidebars. This book is funny. It is not written like a humorless textbook. Also, the humor is not always necessarily what I would call "mainstream" - it is off-kilter, sometimes quirky- which is more enjoyable to me, and I feel to geeks. Let's just say it is more Conan O'brien than Jay Leno. This book is light-hearted and not meant to be all-encompassing (it doesn't include the entire lineage of Bilbo Baggins or anything like that - if you want that, read LOTR), or too technical ( it is not a book full of programming terms or text-lingo like LOL), but it covers and compiles a broad range of fascinating, true geek material from an extensive range of subject matters. Yes, it does have zombies.

This book will join books such as Feast of Crows, The Onion's Our Front Pages, and Infinite Jest in my extensive and distinguished bathroom libary.


Click Here to see more reviews about: Geektionary: From Anime to Zettabyte, An A to Z Guide to All Things Geek

Get 28% OFF

Click here for more information about Geektionary: From Anime to Zettabyte, An A to Z Guide to All Things Geek

Read More...