Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2018 -

Editors Billings and Brown (both, Univ. of Alabama) have assembled a collection of essays from young scholars exploring various facets of sport fans and fandom. From communication and psychological perspectives, the work includes both reviews and original empirical research. Beginning with topics related to aspects of sport fans, such as the association between team identification (i.e., a psychological connection to a sport team) and personality dimensions, experiences of team identification, and the concept of "Basking in Reflected Glory," the authors then examine applications of fanship to areas including the relationship between identification and nationalist attitudes. Later chapters explore outcomes of sport fanship such as deviant behaviors, reactions to team and athlete scandals, and possible future areas of sport fan research including uses and gratifications, technology usage, and virtual reality. Altogether the work is a much-needed update and review of empirical fan research for social scientists. Although the book is geared toward sport fans, it is strongly recommended reading for researchers exploring fans of all interests.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and professionals.

Potential readers might deduce from the subtitle that this work solely covers the modern period of board games. However, Donovan, who also authored Fizz (CH, Jul'14, 51-6142), begins with archaeological discoveries of board games from ancient Egypt and Iraq, and how these games of antiquity evolved into chess and backgammon and to modern Western titles such as The Game of Life, Monopoly, Risk, Clue, Trivial Pursuit, and the toy-like games of Mousetrap and Operation. Recurring themes include how cultural norms and socioeconomic and generational trends affected game and rule design, such as early chess piece design in the Middle East, and how post-World War II German aversions to violence and preferences for cooperative problem solving influenced the development of Settlers of Catan and Pandemic. Game creators and notable players (primarily chess grandmasters such as Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov, and Judit Polgar) are profiled. Donovan deftly refers to market trends to support his main proposition of the staying power of board games. His thesis is that even in the era of the internet, smartphones, and artificial intelligence-based opponents, individuals still have the need to connect to one another in person--board games have proven to be a universal method for such.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

In this groundbreaking study, Schallegger (game studies, Univ. of Klagenfurt, Austria) argues that critical and scholarly study of role-playing games (RPGs) reveals crucial insights about how collaborative participation in storytelling contributes to cultural progress. The author methodically unpacks his thesis by first describing how postmodern approaches to language, authorship, and texts upended traditional assumptions about narrative and authority, in turn encouraging radical critical considerations of story. This open critical environment, in which traditional boundaries between people and art were destabilized, created room for play, both as concept and as activity. In many ways, RPGs exemplify such a postmodern milieu. In RPGs, relationships between gamers and the games they play are fluid. RPG authorship, for example, is a collaboration between the writer of the particular rule set or module being used, the game master, and players. RPGs also provide an imaginative space where people can assume alternative identities and explore different responses to social and historical forces, such as discrimination, loss, and violence. In this regard, RPGs encourage cultural progress by responding to social problems and pressures. The latest volume in McFarland's "Studies in Gaming" series, this volume is required reading for RPG and gaming scholars.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above; professionals.