PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE (RIVERHEAD), 2024

Playing with Reality

How Games Have Shaped Our World

Games are among humanity’s oldest technologies for thinking. Playing with Reality traces how they have shaped the modern world—from Prussian war rooms to game theory, from evolutionary biology to the training of artificial intelligence—and asks how we might design better games for the future.

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NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

The New Yorker · The Economist · The Guardian · Prospect · Behavioral Scientist

FINALIST

PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award · Zócalo Book Prize

“Fascinating and brilliant”

STEVEN POOLE, DAILY TELEGRAPH

“By turns philosophical and polemical, this is a provocative and fascinating book”

THE ECONOMIST, BOOKS OF THE YEAR

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Playing with Reality was written with support from the Sloan Foundation’s Public Understanding of Science & Technology Program.