Masters of Doom

One way to approach writing about Masters of Doom is to talk about its outsized influence. Just off the top of my head: two pretty meaningful pieces of art about technology — blackberry and Halt and Catch Fire — both crib heavily from its narrative and its depictions of the early-90s technology zeitgeist. On the private-sector side, the founders of Reddit and Oculus both cite it as a core text that inspired them to start their companies. While in 2026 some of its narratives and ideas sound a little dated or pat, it manages to be both hagiographic and educational. Kushner does a good job balancing the personality cult (though I found the cloying early chapters about the various protagonists' childhoods to be unrewarding) and the legitimate technology breakthroughs that brought id its success and fame. This is perhaps the strongest thesis espoused by the book, which goes something like as follows: id Software was successful because it had a maniacal engineer single-mindedly focused on…