The Players Ball

“In The Player’s Ball…the internet gets the creepy, disturbing origin story that it deserves.” —New York Times Book Review “Kushner delivers another digestible look at transformations spurred by unpredictable technologies, turning the dry topic of domain-name battles into a lively representation of the era’s hype, confusion, and outsized personalities… An easily consumed, worthwhile addition to the literature reconstructing how the online world has become both profitable and pervasive.” —Kirkus Reviews “Award-winning journalist Kushner revisits this tumultuous period by recounting a quirky episode of website tug-of-war between two of the digital world’s most colorful pioneers.” —Booklist “A real-life Wade Watts, David Kushner found the Golden Easter Egg of internet history—the spy vs spy story of the struggle over Sex.com at the very dawn of the World Wide Web—and he tells the tale masterfully.” —Adam Fisher, author of Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley “David Kushner has written any number of remarkable books and articles about how the American tech industry has invaded our lives and dreams. With The Players Ball, he’s found his raunchiest, funniest, most fascinating story yet. You’ll tell yourself—frequently—while reading this book, ‘That can’t possibly be true,’ but it is. Then again, truth is stranger than fiction only when it’s this well told.” —Tom Bissell, author of Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter “As usual, Kushner delivers a funny and thorough history of some corner of our technological era. He also paints a compelling portrait of two men whose genius and obsession drives them to an almost operatic confrontation played out over decades. Fast and funny, but also tragic and bizarre, Kushner delivers what might be his most unusual and thought provoking work about two men both way ahead of, and emblematic of, their time.” —Zak Penn, coscreenwriter of Ready Player One “The epic battle of the internet visionary behind sex.com and the man who stole it right out from under him, making millions in the process. David Kushner brilliantly tells a fascinating and often hilarious true story about the early days of the web.” —Terence Winter, creator and executive producer of Boardwalk Empire and screenwriter of The Wolf of Wall Street “A brilliant tale.” —Financial Times “A fascinating tale, and Kushner tells it with brio and detail. It’s also an eye-opening account of how much of internet commerce grew, for good or ill, out of the sex industry’s willingness to do anything, and they mean anything, for a buck.” —Tampa Bay Times

David Kushner is an award-winning journalist and author. His books include:

• Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
• Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb
• Alligator Candy: A Memoir

He has written for Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Outside, and other publications. His work has been adapted into award-winning films (Zola and Silk Road), podcasts (Alligator Candy and Cold Truth), and docuseries (The Battle for Justina Pelletier). He is the Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University and lives in New Jersey.