Research Catalog

Title

The monopolists : obsession, fury, and the scandal behind the world's favorite board game / Mary Pilon.

Author

Pilon, Mary

Publication

• New York : Bloomsbury, 2015.
• ©2015

Supplementary Content

Cover image

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

313 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

"With its origins rooted in one of the Wall Street Journal's most emailed stories, The Monopolists is the inside story of how the game of Monopoly came into existence, the heavy embellishment of its provenance by Parker Brothers and multiple media outlets, the lost female originator of the game, and one man's lifelong obsession to tell the true story about the game's questionable origins. Most Americans who play Monopoly think it was invented by an unemployed Pennsylvania man who sold his game to Parker Brothers in 1935 and lived happily ever after on royalties. That story, however, is not exactly true. Ralph Anspach, an economist and refugee of Hitler's Danzig, unearthed the real story and it traces back to Abraham Lincoln, the Quakers, and to a forgotten feminist named Lizzie Magie. The Monopolists is in part Anspach's David-versus-Goliath tale of his 1970s battle against Parker Brothers, one of the most beloved companies of all time. Anspach was a professor fighting to sell his Anti-Monopoly board game, which hailed those who busted up trusts and monopolies instead of those who took control of all the properties. While he and his lawyers researched previous Parker Brothers lawsuits, he accidentally discovered the true history of the game, which began with Magie's Landlord's Game. That game was invented more than thirty years before Parker Brothers sold their version of Monopoly and she waged her own war with Parker Brothers to be credited as the real originator of the game. More than just a book about board games, The Monopolists illuminates the cutthroat nature of American business over the last century--a social history of American corporate greed that reads like the best detective fiction, told through the real-life winners and losers in the Monopoly wars"--

Subject

• Monopoly (Game) > History
• BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Business
• Monopoly (Game)

Genre/Form

History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-301) and index.

Language (note)

• Text in English.

Contents

The professor and the trust-busting game -- A woman invents -- A utopia called Arden -- George Parker and the cardboard empire -- New life for the landlord's game -- Frat boys and Quakers change the game -- Charles Darrow's secret -- Parker Brothers, from Depression to boom -- Conflict, intrigue, revenge -- The case for anti-monopoly -- Anspach connects the dots -- Barton under oath -- A matter of principle -- The burial -- Redemption -- What became of them

Call Number

JBE 15-201

ISBN

• 9781608199631 (HB)
• 1608199630 (HB)
• 9781608199655 (PB)
• 1608199657 (PB)
• 9781620408384 (Trade PB)
• 1620408384 (Trade PB)

LCCN

• 2013047463
• 40024709153

OCLC

849212214

Author

Pilon, Mary, author.

Title

The monopolists : obsession, fury, and the scandal behind the world's favorite board game / Mary Pilon.

Publisher

New York : Bloomsbury, 2015.

Copyright Date

©2015

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-301) and index.

Language

Text in English.

Connect to:

Cover image

Other Standard Identifier

40024709153

Research Call Number

JBE 15-201