Most think it was invented by an unemployed Pennsylvanian who sold his game to Parker Brothers during the Great Depression in 1935 and lived happily—and richly—ever after. That story, however, is not exactly true. Ralph Anspach, a professor fighting to sell his Anti-Monopoly board game decades later, unearthed the real story, which traces back to Abraham Lincoln, the Quakers, and a forgotten feminist named Lizzie Magie who invented her nearly identical Landlord's Game more than thirty years before Parker Brothers sold their version of Monopoly. Her game—underpinned by morals that were the exact opposite of what Monopoly represents today—was embraced by a constellation of left-wingers from the Progressive Era through the Great Depression, including members of Franklin Roosevelt's famed Brain Trust.
A gripping social history of corporate greed that illuminates the cutthroat nature of American business over the last century, The Monopolists reads like the best detective fiction, told through Monopoly's real-life winners and losers.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
February 17, 2015 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781620405710
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781620405710
- File size: 2872 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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