Read the Chapter Grand Thefts.
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Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives, “a scintillating meditation on the promise and discontents of video games” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) is now on sale from Pantheon. The Very Short List calls it “casual, smart and funny.” The Wall Street Journal says that Extra Lives: “is the most fun you’ll ever have reading about videogames. It may prove even more entertaining than playing them.”
Blending memoir, criticism, and first-rate reportage, Extra Lives is like no other book on the subject ever published. Whether you love video games, loathe video games, or are merely curious about why they are becoming the dominant popular art form of our time, Extra Lives is required reading.
Tom Bissell (Xbox Live gamertag: T C Bissell; PlayStation Network gamertag: TCBissell) is the author of Chasing the Sea, God Lives in St. Petersburg, and The Father of All Things. A recipient of the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Bay de Noc Community College Alumnus of the Year Award, he teaches fiction writing at Portland State University and lives in Portland, Oregon.
Praise for Extra Lives
“Bissell has written the finest account yet of what it feels like to be a video game player at ‘this glorious, frustrating time,’ a rare moment when humanity encounters, as he writes, ‘a form of storytelling that is, in many ways, completely unprecedented.'”—New York Times Book Review
“Fantastic . . . I wish, someday, to play a game that will stay with me as long as this book about games.” —Slate
“A master prose stylist, the erudite Bissell is frequently insightful.”
—Boston Globe
“A fascinating book . . . Extra Lives is like taking a private tour at a very exclusive museum, filled with lost masterpieces you never knew existed. You may not find yourself becoming a collector, but you won’t soon forget the experience.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“This journalistic memoir is not only about the meaning of video games; it’s about the heat and hesitation of love.” —Los Angeles Times
“Mr. Bissell is so descriptively alert that his accounts of pixelated derring-do may well interest even those who are immune to the charm of video games . . . Extra Lives is the most fun you’ll ever have reading about videogames.” —Wall Street Journal