This essay is part of “What Is Scholarship Today?”
In 2018, “The History BA Since the Great Recession” identified the history major as the single biggest loser in undergraduate degrees produced nationally between 2011 and 2017, with a drop of more than 30 percent. Computer science, in contrast, grew by more than 50 percent in that period, claiming the spot as the second most rapidly growing major.

Actors Roger Clark (center) and Rob Wiethoff (right) visit Tore C. Olsson’s class (left) at the University of Tennessee to discuss their involvement in Red Dead Redemption. Austin Orr / Lumos Media
There is little doubt that the meteoric rise of computer science as an undergraduate major is linked to an extracurricular hobby that has grown even more rapidly: video gaming. In 2003, Americans spent $11.2 billion on digital games. By 2023, they spent $57.2 billion, eclipsing the revenue of the film and music industries combined. The astronomical growth of video gaming has funneled thousands of college students into STEM fields, eager to create the next generation of games.
But could video gaming also turn students toward the humanities? After all, many of the most popular game franchises are historical in nature, time-warping players into ancient Egypt, feudal Japan, or medieval Europe.
The best-selling historical video game of all time, with more than 60 million units sold, is Red Dead Redemption II (Rockstar Games, 2018). The game depicts a fictional outlaw, Arthur Morgan, and his gangmates as they flee authority across the American landscape of 1899. (The original Red Dead Redemption, released in 2010, is set in the US West and northern Mexico in 1911, with a similar outlaw focus.) I began playing Red Dead Redemption II during pandemic lockdowns, and as a specialist on post–Civil War America, I found myself surprised by the game’s nuance and frequent allusion to major historical topics. So I decided to try an experiment. In 2021, I taught the first-ever college history class using the Red Dead games as a window to understand broader dilemmas of Gilded Age and Progressive Era America. The course, which I’ve also written about in the American Historical Review, has seen both robust enrollments and unprecedented (at least for me) student enthusiasm for discussing historical content.
The course’s success convinced me to attempt this experiment on a larger scale, with a book that repackaged our class’s journey for gamers and history buffs alike. As with the class, Red Dead’s History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America’s Violent Past (St. Martin’s Press, 2024) uses the fictional plot and characters of the Red Dead games as an introductory hook. But the heart of Red Dead’s History is a synthesis of scholarly literature on the late 19th-century US West, South, and Appalachia. I use the games to explore topics ranging from the corporate cattle industry to the Lost Cause to the social construction of race.
Red Dead’s History is the first book about video games for a popular audience written by a professional historian. Its reception over the past months suggests that it might be scratching an itch we didn’t know existed. IGN, the world’s most-read gaming news website, featured multiple stories about the book, including a video that has received millions of views on TikTok and Instagram. Particularly appealing to digital natives is the audiobook, narrated by actor Roger Clark, who played Arthur Morgan. For many gamers, appointing “Arthur” as their new history teacher is an alluring proposition. The book has also granted me unexpected opportunities to address new audiences. This past summer, I spoke to a crowded auditorium at San Diego Comic-Con, the nation’s premier pop-culture exposition, and I have given more than two dozen interviews to journalists, podcasters, and media outlets, including the Chronicle of Higher Education, BBC America, and the History Channel.
Standing alongside the research monographs that constitute our discipline’s primary output, Red Dead’s History is an admittedly unusual work. It’s a work of synthesis, yet equally a work of public translation, engaging a pop-culture medium that few have taken seriously. But it responds to needs that are both timely and pressing, and it might be one way—of many—to prove the relevance of serious history to new generations in the digital age.
Tore C. Olsson is associate professor of history and director of graduate studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
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