Parents' Guide to Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

Olsson's introduction to the history of the nineteenth-century West, South, and Southern Appalachia is a tour-de-force entry point for gamers who want to understand the real stories behind the fictional universe of the Red Dead games. The author effectively toggles between the characters and storylines in the game and the historical events that may have informed them, bringing the virtual world into the real world in a compelling and informative way. So much history is covered that the book could easily serve as a gateway into the period for curious readers, even those who haven't played the games much or at all. The book's most effective as a companion to Red Dead Redemption 2, one of the most successful games of all time. Though this is a historical work written for an adult audience, this highly readable book will be fine for most teens.

Most impressive is Olsson's ability to put real names and faces to the fictionalized representations in the video game. He shows how the Van der Linde gang was likely modeled after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid's Wild Bunch, how individual missions and quests in the game took inspiration from major and minor events in Western and Southern history, and how depictions of race, class, and gender in the game do or don't reflect the way those categories shaped life in the not-so-distant past. The book is rich in archival images and quotations from primary sources and has an extensive bibliography for those interested in further reading. This history is a fantastic example of how video games can serve as fun and engaging educational tools, and how scholarship can and does inform digital storytelling.