I have an affinity for stories like this. Before there was some huge multi-billion dollar industry operated out of boardrooms with massive glitzy ad campaigns and fortune 500 branding deals, there were a few wild, passionate, brilliant people in a dingy room somewhere doing the seemingly impossible. I’m a big fan, for instance, of folklore.org, a website that tells the stories behind the creation of the Macintosh computer.

Masters of Doom is folklore.org for the PC gaming universe. I had a vague sense of the broad strokes here, but as someone who was never a gamer (and was a Mac user during the time this all unfolded) I didn’t know any of the details. Of course I know John Carmack. Even back in the early 2000s I read his .plan file like almost everybody else. And I’ve always had respect for his brilliance and deep hacker ethic. So it was a joy to learn more about his life, and the outsized role he played in the birth of modern gaming. And honestly, if you had asked me who John Romero was, I probably would have said the name sounds familiar.

This was a thorough, engaging book, and Wil Wheaton voicing the audiobook was an inspired choice.