by Alexander KrissThe Gaming Mind

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

THE GAMING MIND A New Psychology of Videogames and the Power of Place ALEXANDER KRISS

Gaming is an undeniable growing phenomenon, and THE GAMING MIND puts it under a magnifying glass. Alexander Kriss sheds light on longoverlooked deeper questions: Why do we rage quit? Why did we create videogames in the first place? And what do they trigger in us? There’s a reason videogames have had a visceral impact on our culture in recent decades – and the answer lies within our own minds – Naomi Kyle, actor, producer and host of YouTube’s ‘Last Week in Gaming’

I’m a gamer and have been my whole life from my first Apple 2+ when I was six. Alexander Kriss’s work is not only a nostalgic tour de force, but it also powerfully explains the positive impact of gaming on our minds and psyches – Jared Polis, Governor of Colorado

A therapist reveals the role of video games in the lives of his patients.

Are video games bad for us? It’s the question on everyone’s mind, given teenagers’ captive attention to video games and the media’s tendency to scapegoat them. It’s also – if you ask clinical psychologist Alexander Kriss – the wrong question.

In his therapy office, Kriss looks at video games as a window into the mind. Is his patient Liz really ‘addicted’ to Candy Crush – or is she evading a deeper problem? Why would aspiring model Patricia craft a hideous avatar named ‘Pat’? And when Jack immerses himself in Mass Effect, is he eroding his social skills – or honing them through relationship-building gameplay?

Weaving together Kriss’s personal history, patients’ experiences and professional insight – and without shying away from complex subjects such as addiction, violence and online harassment – THE GAMING MIND disrupts our assumptions about ‘gamers’ and explores how gaming can be good for us. It offers guidance for parents, clinicians and the rest of us, to better understand the gaming mind. Like any mode of play, at their best, video games reveal who we are – and what we want from our lives.

ALEXANDER KRISS is a clinical psychologist and writer based in New York. He has a private psychotherapy practice, where he specializes in treating adolescents and adults who feel they are suffering from video-game addiction. He is an adjunct professor of psychology at Fordham University and a clinical supervisor at the New School for Social Research and the City College of New York. He writes regularly on the intersections of mental health, politics and popular culture, and his work has appeared in Psychology Today, Kill Screen, Logic and various academic journals and books.

Agent: Tisse Takagi

Publisher: Robinson (Little, Brown) (UK)/The Experiment (US)* Publication: 4 July 2019/31 March 2020 Length: 288 pages

All rights available excluding UK & Commonwealth (Robinson), US & Canada (The Experiment)

*Published in the UK as UNIVERSAL PLAY: How Video Games Tell Us Who We Are and Show Us Who We Could Be

RECENTLY PUBLISHED

HOW TO LIVE A GOOD LIFE A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy Edited by MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI, SKYE C. CLEARY & DANIEL A. KAUFMAN

The editors have chosen contributors who are able to present the views they favor in a style that is not only clear and informative, but in many cases, entertaining as well. This is an excellent introduction to the field of ‘philosophies of life’ – Peter Singer, author of THE MOST GOOD YOU CAN DO

A fascinating and practical guide. I would happily lend you my copy, but it’s too filled with underlinings and scribbles in the margins to be legible – A. J. Jacobs, author of THE YEAR OF LIVING BIBLICALLY

Socrates famously said the ‘unexamined life is not worth living’, but what does it mean to truly live philosophically?

In this thought-provoking, wide-ranging collection, Massimo Pigliucci, Skye Cleary and Daniel Kaufman have collected essays by 15 leading philosophers reflecting on what it means to live according to a philosophy of life.

From John Kaag’s experience grappling with Pragmatism and William James’s question of whether life is worth living, to Skye Cleary’s examination of how the Existentialists’ view of love altered the course of her romantic and professional paths, to Bryan van Norden’s rumination of Confucianism’s relationality and what it means in a Western world where we hold dear the individual self, contributors offer accounts of how they find meaning in the practice of their 15 chosen philosophical traditions (including Neo-Aristotelianism, Daoism and Judaism, among others).

Together, the pieces provide not only a beginner’s guide to choosing a life philosophy but also a timely portrait of what it means to live an examined life in the twenty-first century.

MASSIMO PIGLIUCCI is the K. D. Irani Professor of Philosophy at the City College of New York. He has written for publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, among others. He is the author or editor of 12 books, including HOW TO BE A STOIC (Basic Books (US)/Rider (UK), 2017) and, with Gregory Lopez, A HANDBOOK FOR NEW STOICS (The Experiment (US)/Rider (UK), 2019). He lives in New York City.

SKYE C. CLEARY is a philosopher, writer and popular lecturer. She teaches at Barnard College, City College of New York, and Columbia University, and has lectured on love and philosophy at institutions and venues all over the world. She previously served as the associate director of the Center for New Narratives in Philosophy at Columbia University, which supports research on women and other marginalized groups in the history of philosophy. She is the author of EXISTENTIALISM AND ROMANTIC LOVE (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) and lives in New York City.

DANIEL A. KAUFMAN is a professor of philosophy at Missouri State University. Together with Massimo Pigliucci, he hosts the ‘Sophia’ programme on BloggingHeads.TV, a dialogue-based show devoted to philosophy and the humanities, and he edits ‘The Electric Agora’, an online magazine that publishes essays, dialogues and reviews at the intersection of the humanities, social sciences and popular culture. He lives in Springfield, Missouri.

Agent: Tisse Takagi

Publisher: Vintage/Penguin Random House US Publication: 7 January 2020 Length: 320 pages