Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

What makes this book great is really its first half. That's exclusively because while the whole book invokes happy nostalgia for me, only the first half really contained things I wasn't aware of. Nintendo of my childhood holds a lot more secrets than Nintendo of post-internet-news-site culture. However, if you don't know anything about the history of Nintendo up to 2010 (when the book was published), you'll enjoy it that much more.

Finding out how Nintendo went from a playing card company to one of the most successful companies in the Earth's history is a great page-turner. The real highlight is finding out just how large an influence Shigeru Miyamoto has had on American and Japanese people born post-1975. It's really amazing, and Jeff Ryan does a great job laying out all the facts about Miyamoto and Nintendo (and eventually Sega, Sony and Microsoft) in a way that's informative, casual and humorous.

This is a great read for anyone who enjoys cultural history and, obviously, anyone who grew up enjoying the art that are video-games.