海角大神

Few books can be said to have a transformative effect on the way readers look at a particular subject. Those that do often concern big subjects 鈥� books like Charles Darwin鈥檚 鈥淥n the Origin of Species鈥� or Rachel Carson鈥檚 鈥淪ilent Spring.鈥�

While Mary Pilon鈥檚 The Monopolists does not deal with matters like evolution or the environment, it nonetheless fits the bill. After reading Pilon鈥檚 altogether irresistible new book, Monopoly board game devotees will see their favored activity in an entirely new light. Cynics may ask: What鈥檚 next 鈥� a treatise on Battleship? A critical study of Pictionary? Yet Pilon is persuasive in arguing that 鈥� given its history and remarkable, enduring popularity 鈥� Monopoly is a pastime of rare import.

As Pilon recounts, in 1935 鈥� smack-dab during the Great Depression 鈥� Parker Brothers began offering Monopoly for sale. This was perhaps an unlikely moment for a game focused on finance and real estate. Yet the first wave of players did not seem to mind. 鈥淚n its first year at Parker Brothers, it sold 278,000 popular editions alone,鈥� Pilon writes. The next year the number was 1,751,000.

Pilon puts forth various hypotheses as to why the game was such a hit, but sums up the most plausible in a rhetorical question: 鈥淲as it because players wanted to live vicariously and finger large sums of money 鈥� something that so few could do in the 1930s?鈥�

Among board games in general, Pilon writes, sales ticked up during prosperous times, 鈥渂ut when the economy went south 鈥� the Great Depression then, the 1970s recession and the 2008 global financial crisis in more recent years 鈥� sales were also good.鈥� As Edward Parker, a relative of the founder of Parker Brothers, recognized: 鈥淒uring the Depression, people did not have enough money to go out to the shows.... So they stayed home and played Monopoly.鈥�

In addition to describing Monopoly鈥檚 impact, Pilon also peels away the layers of the game鈥檚 cluttered history: The game did not spring from inventor Charles Darrow鈥檚 head in an Athena-from-Zeus-like manner. Instead, credit must be paid to The Landlord鈥檚 Game, the handiwork of a spunky, industrious woman named Elizabeth Magie. She envisioned the game as a vessel for liberal ideas, specifically those of economist Henry George, an expositor of the 鈥渟ingle tax.鈥� 鈥淲hen players landed on an 鈥榓bsolute necessity鈥� space, such as bread, coal, or shelter, the player had to pay five dollars into the Public Treasury,鈥� Pilon writes, going on to quote Magie: 鈥淭his represents indirect taxation.鈥�

The Landlord鈥檚 Game was published by the Economic Game Company, and Magie obtained a patent for it in 1904. Yet independently produced reproductions of the game proliferated. 鈥淟ittle did she know, variations of the Landlord鈥檚 Game were continuing to spread throughout the Northeast and had become popular at several universities,鈥� Pilon writes.

Charles Darrow enters the story much later, in the 1930s, when friends invited him to play an unofficial version of Finance 鈥� a game also known as Monopoly 鈥� which took its inspiration from The Landlord鈥檚 Game. Finance had enthusiasts among Quaker families in Atlantic City (supplying the game many of its names for spaces).

A struggling salesman from Philadelphia, Darrow seized the moment. He requested the rules in writing from a friend, engaged聽 cartoonist F.O. Alexander to help 鈥渏azz up鈥� the game鈥檚 visuals, and then presented the game to stores as if it were his creation.

Alas, in its sequence of knockoffs, Magie鈥檚 Landlord鈥檚 Game had been diluted: 鈥淢any of the symbols in Darrow鈥檚 version of the game 鈥� a man in jail, railroads, collecting money when passing Go 鈥� could easily be read as positive takes on capitalism rather than as the critiques that Lizzie Magie had intended thirty years earlier, a fantasy interpretation of a financial system that had drawn such cynicism.鈥�

The department store Wanamaker鈥檚 was a buyer, and in time, so was Parker Brothers 鈥� which accepted Darrow鈥檚 stance that Monopoly was his 鈥渂rain child.鈥� It took just $500 (and an agreement to bring out The Landlord鈥檚 Game and a pair of other games she created) for Magie to allow her revised 1924 patent to be purchased, and it took a labyrinthine court case in the 1970s and 鈥�80s (involving inventor Ralph Anspach鈥檚 Anti-Monopoly game) to figure out the convoluted back story.

In Pilon鈥檚 telling, though, the story is anything but convoluted. On the basis of this terrific book, Pilon (a former New York Times reporter) might just have a monopoly when it comes to writing on pop culture in a consistently enlightening, completely absorbing way.
Peter Tonguette reviews books for The Wall Street Journal, The Weekly Standard, and National Review.