While not a perfect book, there are things to like about this biography of Gary Gygax. For one, while it does fictionalize some portions, it footnotes the rest. This allows the reader to both identify which is which, and evaluate the sources the author worked from. As this is not something you can do with the other history of D&D I'm familiar with, namely that found in [b:Designers & Dragons: The '70s|22876735|Designers & Dragons The '70s (Designers & Dragons, #1)|Shannon Appelcline|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1422738563s/22876735.jpg|42441465], I'm very appreciative of this.

I do have a couple of criticisms. First, I could have done without the little fictional vignettes between each "level" of the book. Second, I thought starting with Gary's losing control of TSR and then going back to the beginning of his life was unnecessary. Rather than being the 'hook' that I'm sure the author was hoping for, it instead was something I found myself slogging through as it was one of the chapters of Gary's life that I'm most familiar with (and I suspect many, if not most, other readers are also most familiar with). Third, I felt there were some odd gaps in the history. We get a pretty solid telling of the events leading up to the creation of TSR and the first publication of D&D, then skip to where the company first gets in real trouble. There was very little about those early years of the company as it grew to have some 300 employees, instead just focusing on the crises.

These issues were more than made up for in the various stories and anecdotes from Gary's earlier life that I was unfamiliar with. This early history of Gary and D&D is the best part of the book.