Jeremiah McCall does an excellent job of honoring the personal meanings students find in video games while pushing them to perceive their possible academic resonances. The concrete strategies he articulates in the second edition of Gaming the Past are sure to be valuable for teachers looking for creative ways to integrate video games into their classrooms. While McCall focuses on practical concerns for harnessing the power of games toward demonstrable learning, his work is deeply rooted in the scholarship on historical games studies. As such, this volume serves as a map with plenty of suggested sidequests for those interested in exploring this burgeoning field further.
Lisa Gilbert, Ph.D., Department of Education, Washington
University in St. Louis
Gaming the Past is essential reading for anyone in game studies, media studies, or history education. McCall's deep knowledge of both history and games and decades of experience teaching with them yields a book of unparalleled depth. McCall's framework is vital for educators re-examining how history is conceptualized and taught.
Gaming the Past shows how we can go beyond simple political or ideological arguments and help students dig into the assumptions behind historical games. This book is the perfect tool for helping students unpack meanings and ideologies in games and makes a great teaching resource at the collegiate level as well. Jeremiah McCall is the pre-eminent history game educator.
Kurt Squire, Professor, Informatics and Game Design and Interactive Media, Co-director, Games + Learning + Society, University of California Irvine
Jeremiah McCall is one of the preeminent thinkers at the intersection of games and history education. As a dedicated classroom teacher, McCall keeps the insights offered in this book anchored in the real world, making this an ideal volume for teachers, teacher educators, administrators, and anyone yearning to know more about teaching and learning history with v0ideogames. To this second edition McCall has added his Historical Problem Space Framework, an invaluable addition that bridges theory and practice for a diverse audience.
Taylor M. Kessner, Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education, College of Education, The University of Texas at Arlington
