Brilliant and wildly original ... Profound, rigorous and frequently beautiful ... Even without [the] larger argument, The Score would brim with local insights ... Socially attentive, historically literate and imbued with sensual glee. It is exuberantly eclectic.
A paean to all kinds of games, from Risk to Super Mario Bros ... Mr. Nguyen is an amusing writer ... Persuasively shows how games can illuminate the distortions of modern life—especially our tendency to mistake scores for our true purposes. But the hope that games might one day absorb humanity’s deepest conflicts underestimates how much those conflicts depend on stakes that games, by design, cannot replicate.
Nguyen is lucid, entertaining and precise, illustrating ideas with a mix of personal stories and real-world examples ... A compelling read, urgent but never alarmist ... I came away enriched and uplifted.
An honest and endearing account of Nguyen’s journey of personal discovery through cooking, fishing, climbing, parlour games and yo-yo tricks ... The Score is a sustained celebration of just this kind of privileged society, a particular achievement of modern cosmopolitan liberalism.
Illustrating his ideas with lucid philosophy and descriptions of his own innumerable hobbies...Nguyen skillfully explores the ways in which humans think about progress, creativity, and play. It makes for a captivating look at how imperfect measures of success shape society.
