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The Billion Dollar Monopoly (r) Swindle Paperback – October 10, 2000

by Ralph Anspach (Author)

2 customer reviews

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The court-validated history of the world's most popular board game--embedded in a story of a little guy who took on Corporate America and won. Told with suspense and humor by the professor turned business man turned detective who uncovered the swindle and found the truth. Find out how a woman and a group of Atlantic City Quakers invented Monopoly® only to be deleted from history in a scheme to fatten the corporate bottom line.

"A documentary based on the book is in the works."

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About the Author

Ralph Anspach is a Professor of Economics at San Francisco State University and author of two books and many professional articles. He had a harrowing childhood in Hitler's Germany and then soldiered with the U.S. army in the Philippines and fought with the army of Israel during its war of independence. He was also a university student in Paris, construction stiff in Morocco, a secret code clerk with the U.S. army in Germany, and an exchange professor in Indonesia. He invented the Anti-Monopoly game, stumbled on the market on his own, and eventually sold a million games worldwide. On the way, he was sideswiped by the makers of Monopoly with a ten-year law suit which he finally won in the United States Supreme Court. During the legal wars, he turned detective and uncovered the swindle at the roots of the world's most popular board game.

Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Xlibris; 2 edition (October 10, 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0738831395
ISBN-13: 978-0738831398
Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
Average Customer Review: 2 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,282,281 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2420 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Puzzles & Games > Board Games
- #2533 in Books > Law > Intellectual Property
- #6052 in Books > Business & Money > Biography & History > Company Profiles

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David A. Rozansky

Up Against the Monopoly

January 31, 2009

Format: Paperback

I met Ralph Anspach at the 2009 American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in Denver. I was looking for books to publish, and he had this curious self-published book titled "Monopolygate" (The new title for this ISBN, apparently). Anspach explained that he was the inventor of the game Anti-Monopoly, and that his company was sued for trademark infringement by Parker Brothers and that he eventually won the suit. I had recalled from my youth this particular news item, and had seen the first edition of Anti-Monopoly in a local toy store while all this was going down, so I was excited to find a piece of what was for me, a piece of my childhood come to life.

It seemed like this could be a good topic for our Game Day imprint, and so Anspach gave me a free review copy to read.

Now, I am pretty biased against self-published books, as they are usually poorly written, but as is my nature, I read the first few pages. This was one of those times where a few pages turned into a couple of chapters and then into a long night of not being able to put the book down. There are some typographical errors that stand out, but Anspach has a way of telling a great story about what is essentially a long, drawn-out legal fight against the odds. It's full of people and their opinions, and even the dreaded Parker Brothers-General Mills juggernaut legal team is full of interesting personalities. The twists in this case keep on coming, and considering that all of Anspach's amateur detective work was done in the age before the Internet, it is an amazing piece of real-life amateur sleuthing.

Other reviews have commented on the book's look at how Anspach, a small-business owner, goes to court to defend himself in a nearly impossible-to-win lawsuit and pulls off a counter-offensive against the biggest trademark holder in the game business. Other reviews also laud the book's investigation into the secret history and the incredible cover-up of the game Monopoly. Anspach is deliciously good at telling his side of the story.

But for me, as the publisher of the imprint Game Day which publishes game books and books about games, I was equally impressed by Anspach's story of how an economics professor with no experience in the back-biting world of the game industry (or in business in general) managed to launch a world-class game on a shoestring. For any game-industry entrepreneur or game designer, I strongly recommend this book as a slap of reality in the face. Anspach made every mistake possible, and without much capital at all, and yet through his own tenacity and determination, not only succeeded, but held back the worst onslaught possible from the biggest player in the business, all the way to the Supreme Court.

There is also an intriguing story that Anspach only hints at. In the beginning of the book, we find that he and his family escaped the Nazi Holocaust and that he joined the U.S. Army during World War II and helped decode German messages. He would later illicitly join the freedom fighters in the Israeli War of Independence.

I would have given this book five stars were it not for the persistent typographical errors. But if you can live with stray quotation marks and erroneous paragraph breaks every now and again, then consider this a great story. Yes, Anspach does seem a little biased, and he does promote his own game in the back of the book, but the book is as much an autobiography of how he invented his game as much as it is an expose of the Monopoly monopoly; if anyone has earned the right to promote his own inventions in his own autobiography, Anspach certainly has, and frankly, the end-of-the book promotion does not deter from the story one bit.

This book is for game designers, entrepreneurs, readers of business exposes, Monopoly game lovers and haters, game collectors, economists, lawyers and politicians, and anyone who has ever rooted for the underdog. This is a great business expose told from an individual who stood in the midst of it all.

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Linda Blanchard

You'll never see Monopoly the same again

January 15, 2003

Format: Paperback

This is a wonderful tale of Goliath from David's point of view -- you'll be amazed at what an American business will do to defend its false patent, and it would be downright unbelievable in fiction that a judge would do what a judge actually did -- but you have to believe it because it's there in the court records.
Written with self-effacing humor, this book is a fast and pleasurable read. Unfortunately there's quite a lot of misplaced punctuation (especially quotation marks) that distract from the flow -- but aside from that I find no flaws worth mentioning. Recommended to everyone who's ever played Monopoly (so you can find out what the game you've been playing is *really* about).

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The Billion Dollar Monopoly (r) Swindle Paperback – October 10, 2000

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