... illuminating.

The subtitle of Mr. Roeder’s book—'A Human History'—has a whiff of end-resigned melancholy, implicitly contrasting with a computer-dominated future. In point of fact, Mr. Roeder doesn’t concentrate much on the purely human history of his seven games.

He begins with the long history of games, going back 5,000 years to prehistoric Mesoamerican settlements, and asks: Why does almost every society engage in games and why have certain games survived for centuries? His suggested answers range from the simple — because we’re bored — to the complex.

Roeder takes a fascinating look at seven enduring games: checkers, chess, Go, backgammon, poker, Scrabble and bridge.

With entertaining cultural profiles of the games...Roeder delivers a splashy narrative that successfully argues that games...help individuals develop strategies for navigating daily life.

Roeder...traverses the globe and centuries in his lively quest to understand the appeal of a handful of sophisticated games.