Trammell, Aaron. How Dungeons & Dragons Changed the Way We Play. Duke University Press. 2026. ISBN13: 978-1-478-03904-4. $29.95.

I joined the Dungeons & Dragons world with the 1981 Basic edition but ended up as more of a reader than a player. I couldn’t find an interesting group in my part of rural Virginia and, as the son of a deacon in a Southern Baptist church, I didn’t expect to receive the newest releases for Christmas.

That D&D made it all the way from Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to Mt. Crawford, Virginia attests to the game’s popularity. As the first massively popular roleplaying game system it stands to reason that it would have an outsized effect on what came after. In How Dungeons & Dragons Changed the Way We Play from Duke University Press, Aaron Trammell of the University of California, Irvine examines that impact as the result of the system’s origins, the personalities behind it (correctly focusing on Gary Gygax), and the extension of and reaction to those founding influences.

Professor Trammell offers a brief overview of D&D’s history before examining the game’s place in the milieu of 1970s American culture. The countercultural movement started in the 1960s, a product of the postwar generation, was still in full swing but Trammell notes that Gygax and other developers “were deeply plugged into the predominantly male and politically disparate American wargaming underground; this multifarious group of hobbyists directly corresponded with the military strategists working at the RAND Corporation.”

Trammell devotes a significant portion of his book to the effect of quantification on society at large and gaming in particular. Wargames such as Axis & Allies or the super tactical and highly complex Advanced Squad Leader provide detailed statistics for each game element—that practice appears in D&D as the familiar six-pack of character stats: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, and Charisma. His critique of quantification in several sociopolitical contexts (the body, culture, and religion) offers significant insights into D&D’s working assumptions and impact.

Other conservative tendencies pervaded hobby gaming, in Gygax’s case mirroring his religious beliefs. In a March 2008 interview with Ben Sones, Gygax referred to himself as a “biological determinist,” which he interpreted to mean that men and women thought differently and that gaming was a male pursuit. It’s no surprise, then, that women were almost entirely excluded from design and development roles outside the game and as decoration within the game. One peak (there were many) in this trend was with the infamous “harlot” table from the 1979 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide where you could randomly select a type/status of prostitute from a list of options (p. 192 in my copy).

Finally, I’ll note a new-to-me concept that Trammell puts to good use: the network intellectual. Trammell credits historians Fred Turner and Christine Larson as the term’s originators. To borrow part of Trammell’s quote from Turner and Larson:

“For network intellectuals, celebrity is not so much a matter of spectacular visibility, though they do sometimes achieve it. Rather it is a matter of developing a virtuous spiral of network and reputation building. This spiral generates individual fame and also creates new hubs of public intellectual entrepreneurship within the worlds of commerce, engineering, and academe.”

Turner and Larson identify Norbert Wiener (cybernetics), Stuart Brand (networked consumerism), and Tim O’Reilly (open-source software) as prominent network intellectuals who have achieved fame and significantly influenced the agenda and cultural style of post-Cold War technological development. I plan to read the Network Celebrity paper Trammell quotes—it seems even more relevant now than when it was published in 2015.

I enjoyed How Dungeons & Dragons Changed the Way We Play. There is some repetition between chapters that stands out when reading the book in one pass, but I believe it was a good choice. As published, instructors can assign individual chapters of Trammell’s book without preparing supplemental materials or asking students to read three pages of useful background from another chapter.

I recommend How Dungeons & Dragons Changed the Way We Play for general readers and highly recommend it for academic audiences.

Benjamin Recht, The Irrational Decision. Princeton University Press. 2026. ISBN13: 978-0-691-27244-3.

In The Irrational Decision: How We Gave Computers the Power to Choose for Us from Princeton University Press, Benjamin Recht of UC Berkeley examines the history of computer-driven risk analysis from its foundations in World War II to the present day. Many of Dr. Recht’s themes are familiar, but he provides ample new (to me, at least) perspectives and examples to advance the discussion.

I particularly like his treatment of creating linear models, which have well-defined solutions, as a means of controlling physical systems. Another recent book from Princeton, Disneyland and the Rise of Automation (which I reviewed here) examines automation as applied to theme park ride control and optimization. Recht acknowledges the power of these systems but references a 1989 conference plenary address entitled “Respect the Unstable” by Gunter Stein, a Honeywell engineer, regarding the dangers of forcing linear control over nonlinear systems. Recht notes that Stein provided several examples of small perturbations that caused a nonlinear system controlled using a linear model to get dangerously out of control.

Other examples include gameplay for checkers, chess, go, and poker. These three games are perfect information games with enormous game trees, while poker has a huge game space that includes hidden information. As a risk analysis and optimization problem, it’s theoretically possible to describe the entire game tree of a perfect information game. That has been done for checkers, which was solved in 2007, but seems comfortably out of reach for chess and go.

It’s different for business problems. You can’t build a decision tree or evaluate simulation results without knowing the specific outcome of each play of the game. Defining player payoffs in all but the simplest cases is impossible, especially if you include non-monetary measures. To that end, Recht quotes RAND historian Robert Leonard:

Repeatedly, one encounters the opinion that, as far as systems analysis was concerned, the value of game theory at RAND was not in providing numerical solutions to particular strategic problems, but in providing qualitative insight, in stressing the important of reciprocation, opposing intentions, the credibility of threats, and the like. Game theory played a role in systems analysis, therefore, but not as a generator of numerical solutions to well-specified problems.

How, then, do humans make decisions? The Irrational Decision compares the competing theories of Daniel Kahneman of Thinking Fast and Slow fame, and Gary Klein, who wrote Sources of Power and Streetlights and Shadows. Kahneman focuses on heuristics and rules, while Klein created his Recognition-Primed Decision Making (RDM) model. Recht’s comparison of the two approaches and how the creators achieved a form of reconciliation was interesting to read and more information I hadn’t encountered previously.

The Irrational Game is an excellent book. Even if you’re familiar with the popular literature on decision-making you’ll likely find new information and fresh perspectives. Highly recommended.

Vaclav Smil, Invention and Innovation. MIT Press. 2024. ISBN: 978-0-262-55101-4. $19.95.

Recently, many technologies have been branded as “inevitable”: 3D television, the Metaverse (the online environment with legless avatars from Facebook’s parent company, not Neal Stephenson’s conception from the novel Snow Crash), and vacuum-based transportation systems. The first two technologies in that list are no longer extant and the third, though allegedly implemented in Las Vegas as the Hyperloop, consists of human drivers piloting cars through underground tunnels instead of pneumatic tubes ferrying passengers in a high-speed subway system.

In his book Invention and Innovation, published by MIT Press, Dr. Vaclav Smil examines the history of technological hype within three categories of products: inventions that turned from welcome to unwelcome, inventions that were supposed to dominate but did not, and inventions we keep waiting for. The first category includes effective but harmful substances such as the insecticide DDT and lead as a fuel additive; the second features aircraft such as the zeppelin (lighter than air) and supersonic transport such as the Concorde, both of which fell out of favor when reasonable alternatives arose; and we’re still waiting for our flying cars, jetpacks, and vacuum-tube conveyances that have been promised for years but never delivered.

I was a bit surprised that Smil spends relatively little time on artificial intelligence (AI), but after a few paragraphs on the nature and expense of AI output and the cost of its training, he sums up his two pages on the subject this way:

“The conclusion is obvious: our quest for AI is an enormously complex, multifaceted process whose progress must be measured across decades and generations and whose impressive achievements on some relatively easy tasks coexist with the much larger realm of intelligence that remains well beyond the capabilities of programmed machines.”

Each of Smil’s cases provides important context for the current economic and technological environment. I read Invention and Innovation in its entirety and believe that’s the best way to take in his arguments and analysis, but I also think the book would be equally useful as a reference work for researchers and policy makers or as part of the readings for a course on the social impacts of technology and how it is marketed. Smil’s congenial writing style and comprehensive framework make it easy to appreciate his sensible approach to evaluating claims for products marketed now and in the future.

Martha Wells, Platform Decay. Tor. 2026 ISBN: 978-1-250-82700-5. $24.99.

If you’re a science fiction fan you’ve probably watched or at least seen advertisements for the Murderbot television series from Apple TV. The show is based on a book series by Martha Wells and I’m happy to say that Tor just released the eighth installment Platform Decay. tl;dr: Buy and read the entire series.

The main character of the Murderbot series is a SecUnit (security unit), a former human with cybernetic enhancements used for mission and personal security operations. The SecUnit’s specs are between that of a worker unit and a combat unit, which allows for a variety of matchups against unmodified humans, other SecUnits, more powerful foes, and combinations of adversaries varying in number and type. Importantly, SecUnit bypassed their control module and has free will, which they exercise to aid and protect a group of influential humans.

Murderbot’s independence and echoes of their human existence has allowed Wells to develop the character in interesting ways. As Murderbot grows as an individual, they experience meaningful (and stressful) human interaction, including with children, as part of the exfiltration operations central to the plot of Platform Decay. Murderbot also acts as a mentor to another SecUnit with a hacked control module, Three, so the reader gets to see how Murderbot relates to their own progress as an individual.

Like most of the other books in the Murderbot series, Platform Decay is of novella length and a fairly quick read. While you can read it by itself, I highly recommend reading the previous books in the series so you are familiar with the characters and understand the context for the action in this book. You can buy the first six installments of the series as ebooks from most major retailers.

I loved Platform Decay and can’t wait for the next Murderbot book. Highly recommended!

Kory Stamper, True Color. Alfred A. Knopf. 2026. ISBN: 978-1-5247-3303-2. $32.00.

Color is hard to define, both in the general sense and when specifying individual colors. Spare a thought for the lexicographers, editors, and subject matter experts in charge of updating color definitions for Webster's Third New International Dictionary. This unabridged monster was finally published in 1961, two years late and a million dollars over budget when a million dollars was still a million dollars.

Kory Stamper, a lexicographer who worked for Merriam-Webster for many years, weaves a compelling narrative of how editors of the Third wanted to bring its color definitions and definitional framework into the scientific age. They recruited I.H. Goodlove, a respected expert, to build out the framework and define individual colors within that new scheme. Experts are in constant demand and some have a hard time saying no to requests for their time, so everyone who has ever had a manage a project (especially one that involves producing a book) knows how this story goes.

Beyond the obvious concerns, though, Goodlove's eccentricities pushed the editors to their limit. Insisting on a specific color framework used by industrial colorists but not formalized as a standard, delivering definitions late or not at all, and extended absences due to health concerns all factor into this fascinating tale.

As the author of more than 40 books, I can attest that on some projects it seems like the book will never make it to the finish line and it would be better to accept that you have wasted tons of effort and quit throwing good money, time, blood, sweat, and tears after bad. Despite those temptations, the Third came out, albeit significantly late, and the tale of the struggle to get those bookplates to the printer with the color section included makes for riveting reading. And what happened after with the color definitions for a subsequent American Heritage Dictionary release offers valuable context for both the Third and how color work was performed and perceived in industry and society.

Elisabeth B. Reynolds (ed.), Priority Technologies. MIT Press. 2026. ISBN 978-0-262-05429-4. $24.95.

Priority Technologies, edited by Dr. Elisabeth B. Reynolds and published by the MIT Press, offers policy recommendations to develop six technologies critical to U.S. national security: critical minerals, semiconductors, biomanufacturing, quantum computing, drones, and advanced manufacturing. Reynolds and her Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) colleagues make specific policy recommendations for each of the technologies.

The technology-focused chapters follow a set structure: Strategic Importance, Current Landscape, Gaps and Opportunities, and Recommendations. This format is similar to the popular SWOT framework, which looks at Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, in this case with added context provided by the strategic analysis. The recommendations, made by senior faculty with impressive credentials (most of whom occupy named chairs), follow a similar format and often contain similar recommendations.

Among the authors, there appears to be a consensus that the United States should develop regional hubs centered on specific technology groups. I first encountered this type of analysis in AnnaLee Saxenian’s book Regional Advantage, which was published in 1994 and depicted the rise of technology hubs along Route 128 near Boston and in Silicon Valley. Much as in Shenzhen now and with craft-based artisanry in pre-industrial Italy, concentrations of skill and resources create beneficial interactions and competition.

Proposing this type of government-led development within the United States can be a bit fraught. When I worked in the Washington, DC, area in the 1990s the term “industrial policy” evoked strong reactions. Discussions meandered from claims that central planning doomed the Soviet Union, through arguments pointing out the success of Japanese programs running through the Ministry of Technology and Industry (MITI), and often concluding with someone claiming that the United States was a free market economy and the government had no business “picking winners and losers.”

Such discussions went from interesting to drudgery after the first few times through the loop, but one could easily make the case that government entities have always picked winners and losers through acquisitions, tax incentives, and subsidies. More directly, the United States federal government acquired about 10% of Intel stock in 2025 with the stated goal of strengthening our domestic chip design and fabrication capabilities.

Thankfully, the authors bypass the age-old industrial policy debate and recommend sensible levels of government support for specific technologies, industries, and regional development hubs. While Europe has moved away from national champions, at least in part, countries such as China are following aggressive loss-leading strategies to extend their dominance beyond contracted manufacturing. It might not be time to dust off our copies of MITI and the Japanese Miracle, but there are certainly lessons to be learned.

Priority Technologies offers sensible recommendations for policymakers, legislators, and other parties interested in shaping the future of American industry. Yes, it appears that some level of explicit industrial policy is required to create a solid technological foundation for the next phase of economic development, but old prejudices should not stand in the way of future growth.