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Inside the making of the multibillion-dollar Grand Theft Auto video game empire
Grand Theft Auto is one of the biggest and most controversial video game franchises of all time. Since its first release in 1997, GTA has pioneered the use of everything from 3D graphics to the voices of top Hollywood actors and repeatedly transformed the world of gaming. Despite its incredible innovations in the $75 billion game industry, it has also been a lightning rod of debate, spawning accusations of ethnic and sexual discrimination, glamorizing violence, and inciting real-life crimes. Jacked tells the turbulent and mostly unknown story of GTA's wildly ambitious creators, Rockstar Games, the invention and evolution of the franchise, and the cultural and political backlash it has provoked.
–Explains how British prep school brothers Sam and Dan Houser took their dream of fame, fortune, and the glamor of American pop culture and transformed it into a worldwide video game blockbuster
–Written by David Kushner, author of Masters of Doom and a top journalist on gaming, and drawn from over ten years of interviews and research, including firsthand knowledge of Grand Theft Auto's creators and detractors
–Offers inside details on key episodes in the development of the series, including the financial turmoil of Rockstar games, the infamous "Hot Coffee" sex minigame incident, and more
Whether you love Grand Theft Auto or hate it—or just want to understand the defining entertainment product of a generation—you'll want to read Jacked and get the real story behind this boundary-pushing game.
A contributing editor of Rolling Stone, David Kushner also writes for publications including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired, The New York Times Magazine, New York, GQ, and Esquire. Kushner served as the digital culture commentator for National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday, and has taught journalism at Princeton University and New York University. He has been featured in The Best Business Writing, The Best American Crime Reporting, and The Best Travel Writing, and his ebook The Bones of Marianna: A Reform School, a Terrible Secret, and a Hundred-Year Fight for Justice, was chosen by Amazon as a Best Digital Single of the Year. His books include The Players Ball; Alligator Candy: A Memoir (an NPR best book of 2016) ; Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto; Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb; Jonny Magic and the Card Shark Kids: How a Gang of Geeks Beat the Odds and Stormed Las Vegas; and Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture.
Adam Verner is a full-time narrator and voice talent with over one hundred titles recorded. He is the recipient of AudioFile Earphones Awards for Pavilion of Women by Pearl S. Buck and The Big It by A. B. Guthrie, Jr. Adam earned his MFA in acting from the Chicago College of the Fine Arts at Roosevelt University.
Reviews
“The most fascinating element of the GTA saga is not the groundbreaking gaming experience, but its cultural impact…Kushner…turn[s] what could be a dry, technical history lesson into an entertaining, if hyperbolic, read.”
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