Seven Games
A Human History
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Narrated by:
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William Sarris
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By:
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Oliver Roeder
About this listen
Checkers, backgammon, chess, and Go. Poker, Scrabble, and bridge. These seven games, ancient and modern, fascinate millions of people worldwide. In Seven Games, Oliver Roeder charts their origins and historical importance, the arcana of their rules, and the ways their design makes them pleasurable.
Roeder introduces thrilling competitors, such as evangelical minister Marion Tinsley, who across 40 years lost only three games of checkers; Shusai, the Master, the last Go champion of imperial Japan; and an IBM engineer who created a backgammon program so capable at self-learning that NASA used it on the space shuttle. He delves into the history and lore of each game: backgammon boards in ancient Egypt, the Indian origins of chess, how certain shells from a particular beach in Japan make the finest white Go stones.
Roeder explores why games, seemingly trivial pastimes, speak so deeply to the human soul. He introduces an early philosopher of games, the aptly named Bernard Suits, and visits an Oxford cosmologist who has perfected a computer that can effectively play bridge, a game as complicated as human language itself. Throughout, Roeder tells the compelling story of how humans, pursuing scientific glory and competitive advantage, have invented AI programs better than any human player, and what that means for the games - and for us.
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Women are not ancillary to the history of technology; they turn up at the very beginning of every important wave. But they've often been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don't even realize. Vice reporter and YACHT lead singer Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her insightful social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the Internet what it is today. Evans shows us how these women built and colored the technologies we can't imagine life without.
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Inspiring
- By Jean on 03-29-18
By: Claire L. Evans
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The Talent Code
- Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How.
- By: Daniel Coyle
- Narrated by: John Farrell
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawing on cutting-edge neurology and firsthand research gathered on journeys to nine of the world’s talent hotbeds - from the baseball fields of the Caribbean to a classical-music academy in upstate New York - Coyle identifies the three key elements that will allow you to develop your gifts and optimize your performance in sports, art, music, math, or just about anything.
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Okay read. Won’t read a second time
- By Chad J Guidry on 08-18-20
By: Daniel Coyle
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Of Dice and Men
- The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and the People Who Play It
- By: David M. Ewalt
- Narrated by: David M. Ewalt, Mikael Naramore
- Length: 8 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In Of Dice and Men, David Ewalt recounts the development of Dungeons & Dragons from the game’s roots on the battlefields of ancient Europe, through the hysteria that linked it to satanic rituals and teen suicides, to its apotheosis as father of the modern video-game industry. As he chronicles the surprising history of the game’s origins (a history largely unknown even to hardcore players) and examines D&D’s profound impact, Ewalt weaves laser-sharp subculture analysis with his own present-day gaming experiences.
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Interesting Topic, but Terrible Execution.
- By Diebold on 02-11-14
By: David M. Ewalt
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The Click Moment
- Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World
- By: Frans Johansson
- Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt
- Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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On the one hand we aren’t surprised by the uncertainty of everyday life, but on the other we believe that success can be analyzed and planned for. It is a revealing paradox. The implications are explosive and they obliterate every common-sense notion we have about strategy and planning. The Click Moment is about two very simple but highly provocative ideas.
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Outstanding book!
- By Anilyn Karel on 08-26-24
By: Frans Johansson
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The Chaos Imperative
- How Chance and Disruption Increase Innovation, Effectiveness, and Success
- By: Ori Brafman, Judah Pollack
- Narrated by: Drew Birdseye
- Length: 4 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Ori Brafman and management consultant Judah Pollack dramatically demonstrate how even the best and most efficient organizations - from Fortune 500 companies to today's US Army - can become more innovative by allowing a little unstructured space and "contained chaos" into their planning and decision-making. Through their consulting work, they realized that while structure and hierarchy are essential both in large corporations and small groups, too much of either can stifle creativity.
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a must read!!
- By Kelly Pavich on 05-26-19
By: Ori Brafman, and others
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Thinking Machines
- The Quest for Artificial Intelligence - and Where It's Taking Us Next
- By: Luke Dormehl
- Narrated by: Gus Brown
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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When most of us think about artificial intelligence, our minds go straight to cyborgs, robots, and sci-fi thrillers where machines take over the world. But the truth is that artificial intelligence is already among us. It exists in our smartphones, fitness trackers, and refrigerators that tell us when the milk will expire. In some ways the future people dreamed of at the World's Fair in the 1960s is already here. We're teaching our machines how to think like humans, and they're learning at an incredible rate.
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Mostly platitudes with no depth
- By Gary on 03-24-17
By: Luke Dormehl
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Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids
- How a Gang of Geeks Beat the Odds and Stormed Las Vegas
- By: David Kushner
- Narrated by: David Kushner
- Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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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!
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Liberal storytelling at it's worst
- By B. Riddick on 11-30-05
By: David Kushner
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Explore/Create
- My Life in Pursuit of New Frontiers, Hidden Worlds, and the Creative Spark
- By: Richard Garriott, David Fisher
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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An inventor, adventurer, entrepreneur, collector, and entertainer, and son of legendary scientist-astronaut Owen Garriott, Richard Garriott de Cayeux has been behind some of the most exciting undertakings of our time. A legendary pioneer of the online gaming industry - and a member of every gaming Hall of Fame - Garriott invented the multi-player online game, and coined the term "Avatar" to describe an individual's online character. In this fascinating memoir, Garriott invites listeners on the great adventure that is his life.
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The Modern Day Explorer
- By Elijah on 04-17-17
By: Richard Garriott, and others
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Smarter Than You Think
- How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better
- By: Clive Thompson
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In Smarter Than You Think, Thompson documents how every technological innovation - from the printing press to the telegraph - has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt, learning to use the new and retaining what’s good of the old.
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Title should be Getting Smarter Through Technology
- By A. Yoshida on 03-10-17
By: Clive Thompson
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Bounce
- Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success
- By: Matthew Syed
- Narrated by: James Clamp
- Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Few things in life are more satisfying than beating a rival. We love to win and hate to lose, whether it's on the playing field or at the ballot box, in the office or in the classroom. In this bold new look at human behavior, award-winning journalist and Olympian Matthew Syed explores the truth about our competitive nature: why we win, why we don't, and how we really play the game of life.
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Very eye opening
- By Joao on 06-14-10
By: Matthew Syed
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Maphead
- Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks
- By: Ken Jennings
- Narrated by: Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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It comes as no surprise that, as a kid, Jeopardy! legend Ken Jennings slept with a bulky Hammond world atlas by his pillow every night. Maphead recounts his lifelong love affair with geography and explores why maps have always been so fascinating to him and to fellow enthusiasts everywhere.
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A Romp through Maps
- By Lynn on 01-27-12
By: Ken Jennings
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Strategic Intuition
- The Creative Spark in Human Achievement
- By: Bill Duggan
- Narrated by: Dennis Holland
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
How "Aha!" really happens....When do you get your best ideas? You probably answer "At night" or "In the shower" or "Stuck in traffic". You get a flash of insight. Things come together in your mind. You connect the dots. You say to yourself, "Aha! I see what to do." Brain science now reveals how these flashes of insight happen. It's a special form of intuition. We call it strategic intuition, because it gives you an idea for action - a strategy. This new book by William Duggan is the first full treatment of strategic intuition.
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Stratigic Intuition
- By Amazon Customer on 12-17-08
By: Bill Duggan
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What listeners say about Seven Games
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- A. Hoffmann
- 04-08-22
Mostly about AI
This focused a lot on artificial intelligence, which was an ok perspective, but I thought it’s history of these games tilted more to AI and why that was built than in the games itself. It got a little repetitive. Still interesting though.
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- Mark L
- 01-03-23
All about computers and games
Probably not what you expect. I thought it would be the history, development and the strategy of each game but it is the history of the effects computers have on the gaming world.
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- Sam Walker
- 09-11-24
Better title Seven Games: An AI History
I found the subtitle "A Human History" completely misleading - its a computer history. There are entire books of the history of Chess, but here we begin with the Turk, and move to Babbage - just glancing off the huge names in the history like Philidor.
As with the opening chapter, where it concludes with "Checkers is Solved" (by a computer, grunting away for 18 years) I found this less an achievement than a sad tombstone. Yes, circuits with massive databases of human achievement, can, with their artificial speed and artificial evaluation algorithms draw or defeat people - at a very thing that only people cherish. Games are special, play and work, art and science, learning and teaching - but to a computer. Well, tell me what computer is going to enjoy listening to this audiobook. I didn't. I'd rather read an actual "A Human History", not a computer one.
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