Joystick Nation

In a scant fifteen years, video and computer games have become a multibillion-dollar global industry - a fixture in malls, laundromats, movie theaters, living rooms, and offices around the world - sucking up leisure time and disposable income at a phenomenal pace. They have shaped the minds of a whole generation who spent countless after-school hours, joystick in hand, heart pounding, sweating through the latest chunk of thumb candy to come out of Tokyo and Silicon Valley. For better or worse, video and computer games have swooped, rattled, and blasted their way into our brains. Now J. C. Herz, author of Surfing on the Internet (and video-game veteran), brings us the first popular history and critique of electronic entertainment, from its genesis as primitive blips in the labs of Cold War computer programmers to the studios where networked 3-D theme parks are created. 230 pages.