DavidKushner.com

[Coming February 2009 from Walker & Company]

In the decade after World War II, one entrepreneurial family helped thousands of people buy into the American dream of owning a home. The Levitts — William, Alfred, and their father, Abe — pooled their talents to create storybook towns with affordable little houses. They laid out the welcome mat, but not to everyone. Levittown had a whites-only policy.

The events that unfolded in Levittown, PA, in the unseasonably hot summer of 1957 would rock the community. There, a white Jewish Communist family named Wechsler secretly arranged for a black family, the Myerses, to buy the pink house next door. The explosive reaction would transform their lives, and the nation, leading to the downfall of a titan and the integration of the most famous suburb in the world.

Levittown is a story of hope and fear, invention and rebellion, and the power that comes when ordinary people take an extraordinary stand. And it is as relevant today, more than fifty years later, as it was then.

Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to co-create the most notoriously successful game franchises in history—Doom and Quake—until the games they made tore them apart.

Americans spend more money on video games than on movie tickets. Masters of Doom is the first book to chronicle this industry’s greatest story, written by one of the medium’s leading observers. David Kushner takes readers inside the rags-to-riches adventure of two rebellious entrepreneurs who came of age to shape a generation. The vivid portrait reveals why their games are so violent and why their immersion in their brilliantly designed fantasy worlds offered them solace. And it shows how they channeled their fury and imagination into products that are a formative influence on our culture, from MTV to the Internet to Columbine. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry—a powerful and compassionate account of what it’s like to be young, driven, and wildly creative.

REVIEWS

“Kushner’s mesmerizing tale of the Two Johns moves at a rapid clip . . . describing the twists and turns of fate that led them to team up in creating the most powerful video games of their generation. . . . An exciting combination of biography and technology.”
—USA Today

“Meticulously researched . . . as a ticktock of the creative process and as insight into a powerful medium too often dismissed as kids’ stuff, Masters of Doom blasts its way to a high score.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“[An] extraordinary journey . . . an exhilarating time capsule of a moment in time where anything could happen—and often did. Kushner’s take on this geek uprising is like a breakneck-paced comic book that you can’t put down.”
—Newsday

“Kushner’s portrait of Carmack is lustrous and gripping. . . . An impressive and adroit social history.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“Terrifically told . . . The storytelling is so fluid, so addictive, that your twitching thumbs keep working the pages.”
—The Washington Post Book World

"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 inspired rendition. Dave Kushner chronicles the saga of video game virtuosi Carmack and Romero with terrific brio. This is a page-turning, mythopoeic cyber-soap opera about two glamorous geek geniuses - and it should be read while scarfing down pepperoni pizza and swilling Diet Coke, with Queens of the Stone Age cranked up all the way." -Mark Leyner, author of I Smell Esther Williams

"Masters of Doom is an excellent archetypal tale of hard work and genius being corrupted by fame too young and fortune too fast. I rooted for these guys, was inspired by them, then was disturbed by them, and was fascinated from beginning to end." -Po Bronson, author of The Nudist on the Late Shift

"Like Hackers, David Kushner's Masters of Doom paints a fascinating portrait of visionary coders transforming a previously marginal hobby into a kind of 21st-century art form -- and enraging an entire generation of parents along the way. Kushner tells the story with intelligence and a great sense of pacing. Masters of Doom is as riveting as the games themselves." -Steven Johnson, author of Emergence

"Masters of Doom tells the compelling story of the decade-long showdown between gaming's own real-life dynamic duo, played high above the corridors of Doom in the meta-game of industry and innovation. With the narrative passion of a true aficionado, Kushner reminds us that the Internet was not created to manage stock portfolios but to serve as the ultimate networked entertainment platform. It's all just a game." -Douglas Rushkoff, author of Coercion, Ecstasy Club, and Nothing Sacred

"Are you brainy? Gifted? Deeply alienated? Ever wanted to be a multimillionaire who transformed a major industry? Then Masters of Doom is the book for you!"-Bruce Sterling, author of Tomorrow Now

If you think a gang of real-life geeks can’t take on the world and win big . . . think again. And whatever you do, don’t sit down across a gaming table from Jon Finkel, better known as Jonny Magic. Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids is his amazing true story: the jaw-dropping, zero-to-hero chronicle of a fat, friendless boy from New Jersey who found his edge in a game of cards–and turned it into a fortune.

The ultimate bully-magnet, Finkel grew up heckled and hazed until destiny came in the form of a trading-card game called Magic: The Gathering. Magic exploded from nerdy obsession to mainstream mania and made the teenage Finkel an ultracool world champion.

Once transformed, this young shark stormed poker rooms from the underground clubs of New York City to the high-stakes tables online, until he landed on the largest card-counting blackjack team in the country. Taking Vegas for millions, Finkel’s squad of brainy gamers became the biggest players in town. Then they took on the town’s biggest game, the World Series of Poker, and walked away with more than $3.5 million.

Thrilling, edgy, and ferociously feel-good, the odyssey of these underdogs-turned-overlords is the stuff of pop-culture legend. And David Kushner, acclaimed author of Masters of Doom, masterfully deals out the outrageous details while bringing to life a cast of characters rife with aces, kings, knaves . . . and more than a few jokers. If you secretly believe every player has his day, you’re right. Here’s the proof.

REVIEWS

"Poker may be the sell, but Kushner has really written a classic story about a nerd who got the crap beaten out of him in high school but came out on top in the end." ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

"A terrific underdog story." BOOKLIST

"Nerd's Revenge...the stirring tale of the geeks who stormed Las Vegas." ROLLING STONE

"Thoroughly engaging...a story worth cheering about...Kushner knows how to tell a story, plus he writes - and reads - with gusto and charm." PHILADELPHIA ENQUIRER

"Appealing...solidly reported." THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD

"The author shows how Finkel and others now in their 20's came to gambling through the fantasy card game Magic, a complex concoction that appeared in 1993 and soon acquired a cult following. Finkel emerged as one of its top players. Magic turned out to be good training for poker -- the strategy, the mathematics, the tracking of cards, the reading of other players. And, of course, the ability to endure mind-numbing hours at a card table...Kushner's account is genial." THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"Poker is hot -it used to be played to the sound of a pianola in smoky honkytonks by hustlers, cowboys and guys with rolled-up sleeves, green eyeshades and bad attitudes until it acquired a patina of celebrity glitz. Enter the card sharking geeks -the teenager Jon Finkel who found a cult-trading card game called "Magic: The Gathering" and proceeded, with the help of genius kid gamers, to take on the high rollers of the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, beat the odds and walk away with a bucketful of big bucks. Kids these days!" THE TIMES of LONDON

"Eminently readable...Kushner is an experienced explicator of subcultures, and Jonny Magic is useful in helping one understand exactly why poker has gotten as big as it has." THE WASHINGTON MONTHLY