---
product_id: 36685631
title: "Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World"
brand: "riverhead books"
price: "AR$58696"
currency: ARS
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
category: "Book"
url: https://www.desertcart.com.ar/products/36685631-wonderland-how-play-made-the-modern-world
store_origin: AR
region: Argentina
---

# Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World

**Brand:** riverhead books
**Price:** AR$58696
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

## Quick Answers

- **What is this?** Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World by riverhead books
- **How much does it cost?** AR$58696 with free shipping
- **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship
- **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.com.ar](https://www.desertcart.com.ar/products/36685631-wonderland-how-play-made-the-modern-world)

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## Description

Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World

## Images

![Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/6180B36HHzL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    A good read with an oversold thesis that isn't quite up to par for a fine writer
  

*by S***N on Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2017*

Wonderland : How Play Made the Modern World (2016) by Steven Johnson is an interesting read about the impact of how luxuries and amusements have had on history. Johnson wrote a superb book called ‘How we got to now’ that had a limited number of key inventions that he says lead to the modern world. Wonderland is similarly constructed.The book looks at shopping, music, taste, illusion, games and public space. The chapter on shopping looks at how the development of shopping fed growth. When looking at music the fact that humans like music and the importance of automatic players is described. Taste concentrates on the importance of the spice trade. Illusion looks at spiritual shows and finally Disney. Games looks at Chess and early computer games. Public space describes pubs and other public spaces.Johnson is a fine writer and a lot of the information in the book is fascinating. His descriptions of the mechanical works of Iranian engineers is amazing. However, the book is undermined in that the main thesis running through it is oversold. The book is worth reading for a well written and interesting diversion though.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    when computers learn to play...
  

*by R***K on Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2019*

When I was a kid, I loved going to Disneyland. It is such a magical place. It is full of music, lights, animals, pirates, ghosts and so much more. As an adult I still find Disneyland a magical place. Though I know a lot of the secrets behind the magic, I am amazed at how I can find a magical kingdom smack dab in the middle of Orange County. But when you really take a step back and look at the wonders of Disneyland (and the Disney Company as a whole) you realize how the entire entity is completely unnecessary. To survive, we don’t need Disneyland. From an evolutionary perspective, Disneyland is a complete waste of resources.Or maybe not.This is the basis of the book Wonderland. The old bromide states that life’s greatest technological achievements were created from necessity. Times of war or famine have brought us revolutionary advances in atomic energy and agriculture practices. However, in this work, Johnson argues that the greatest achievements in human history were not built around necessity but around play. From fashion, music, taste, magic, games and public spaces, some of the greatest inventions were built from play. It is amazing to trace the evolution of computers to the development of music recorders or how our appetite for trickery led to the visual representations like film and video. The weakest chapter is probably the last one on public spaces, this chapter felt flat and perhaps quite obvious to the reader.This a very interesting book much in the spirit of his other work How We Got to Now. Though Wonderland does not live up to How We Got to Now, it is still a very interesting book.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Well-written and enjoyable, but not a book about play
  

*by D***D on Reviewed in the United States on March 22, 2017*

This is the first book I've read by Steven Johnson, and I enjoyed the way he traced the development of major technological and cultural innovations back to roots which were less utilitarian and more aesthetic or even hedonistic. But with the possible exception of the chapter on games, most of the book is not about the role of play in shaping society, so much as the impact of the human appetite for novel, surprising, and pleasurable sensory experiences (e.g., the visual displays of upscale shopping venues or phantasmagoria, the tactile pleasures of cotton, the taste of nutmeg).

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*Product available on Desertcart Argentina*
*Store origin: AR*
*Last updated: 2026-02-12*