Book overview
In the nineteenth century, Marx rejected the notion of homo sapiens, offering instead homo faber to indicate how consciousness follows from the primary activity of making. Against this, a certain ludic tradition has imagined a homo ludens, humans defined through their relationship with games and play. Cabinet 45 features Joshua Glenn on H.G. Wells' "Floor Games"; D. Graham Burnett on games played by game theorists; Barbara Levine and Jessica Helfand on dexterity games; James Trainor on the lost world of "adventure" playgrounds; Dana Katz on Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's "Oblique Strategies"; an interview with Bertell Ollman, inventor of the board game "Class Struggle"; and Jeff Dolven on poems as games. Elsewhere in the issue: Helen Larsson on the history of applause; Wayne Koestenbaum's legendary "Legend" column; Naomi Muller on eating the zoo animals in Berlin during World War II; Jeremy Crichton on "spite" houses; and much more.