Showing results by author "David Kushner" in All Categories

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 produce the most notoriously successful game franchises in history - Doom and Quake - until the games they made tore them apart. This is a story of friendship and betrayal, commerce and artistry.

A Wild West look at the early days of the internet - the incredible battle between the founder of Match.com and the con man who swindled him out of the online domain name Sex.com in an all-out war for control over the fuel that still powers the online world to this day: love and lust. 

From Masters of Doom author David Kushner comes Prepare to Meet Thy Doom, a compilation of true gaming stories covering many facets of America's biggest entertainment business: the video game industry. In addition to more than a dozen fascinating tales of game creation, play, business, and controversy, Prepare to Meet Thy Doom follows up on Kushner's previous best seller, Masters of Doom, with a long-awaited update.

Every day, it seems, we hear stories about hackers. Hackers breaking into the computers of banks, governments, and corporations. Some are criminals, coding to exploit and destroy. Others are activists, using their tools to challenge institutions and fight for freedom. But often these characters linger in the shadows. Who are they? What makes them tick? Are they our allies, or our enemies?

With its manicured lawns and well-kept college-style buildings, the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida-the largest reform school in the country-always seemed like a model for how to turn wayward teens back into productive members of society. But for decades, the century-old school's alumni whispered about a nightmarish reality that lurked behind the gleaming facade - a legacy of beatings, sexual abuse, and even murder, the evidence buried in unmarked graves on the overgrown fringes of the property.