Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past

Review

by Zhihui Zou
published on 30 May 2025

This book is Tore Olsson's attempt to use the "Red Dead Redemption II" video game to propose a unique approach to teaching US History. Reflecting on the class that he designed around the game, this book is beneficial for general readers because of its engaging and narrative writing style, and it is a wonderful reference book for university researchers and faculty looking for innovative ways to transform their pedagogy.

Many university students today have complained about the dryness and boringness of their history courses. Tore Olsson, Associate Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, who specializes in the US South and post-Civil War US, taught a new history course at his university in 2021 that approached US history through the popular video game Red Dead Redemption II, the most-played US-history-themed video game after The Oregon Trail. The course was a major success, drawing students from various backgrounds as well as major online attention. This book is a result of Olsson's pedagogical experiment. Instead of following the structure of a traditional history research monograph, this book's chapters are ordered to follow the storyline of Red Dead Redemption II. Written for the general public while also informative for pedagogical advancements for university-level faculty and high school teachers, this book is a wonderful and unique reflection on how certain themes in US history have been portrayed, written, rewritten, taught, and even weaponized.

Red Dead Redemption II, a new version of the 2010 game Red Dead Redemption, was developed by Rockstar Games and released in 2018. It instantly became a popular attraction. With its story set in 1899 US, players follow the fictional characters Arthur Morgan and the Van der Linde gang as they try to escape from federal pursuits after their robberies. These characters venture throughout the American West, South, Appalachia, and the Caribbean. Olsson recognizes both the game's merit in helping a broader audience to engage with history and places where the game strengthens stereotypes and retells historical narratives that historians have already deemed inaccurate or harmful. The book's three parts reflect the game's geographical settings (except the Caribbean). Each chapter focuses on one theme in US history during the Reconstruction era and the early 20th century. A chapter opens with a symbolic historical image of the theme, followed by how the game tells this history, and ends with an analysis of the accurate and inaccurate aspects of the game, ending with a professional historical overview of this topic. Some topics discussed include the Indian Wars, railroad development, cowboy culture, the Pinkertons, racial formation of American South cities, women's suffrage, and many others.

What makes this book important for today's scholars and readers is that, overarching all chapters, Olsson addresses the question of how history is portrayed and the conflicts over who gets to tell the history and how. How should someone balance the academic rigor of a history narration with the public accessibility of such a narration? Implicitly, a book like this one forces both the public history industry and history academia to reflect on themselves. Academic history monographs today can only dream about reaching as wide an audience as Red Dead Redemption II; Rockstar, with the pressure to make 'engaging,' 'fun,' and 'attractive' games to fulfill its financial pursuits, has to sacrifice some historical accuracy. More importantly, through the historical narrative choices that Rockstar makes, we also get to see some existing issues in the public perception of history today. For instance, even though the game takes place in four geographical settings, why is the game marketed as a Western game? This raises the issue of the image of the “American West” in popular culture and narratives. By including Confederate monuments in the game's fictional American South town of Saint Denis, what can we learn about the existing debates about public monuments happening throughout the US?

Public history is now a rather mature field. Although Olsson's work here could be categorized as public history, it is a specific approach within public history. It reminds readers that what we read in history books is never static information. They constantly change with shifts in political power, financial power, pop culture, and literature. In a sense, this book acts as a giant accompaniment encyclopedia to Red Dead Redemption II, allowing the public to both enjoy gamified history and learn history through what or why Rockstar chose to include, not include, and change. For scholars and educators, Olsson's book is a pedagogically pioneering work that acts as an important reference work for historians of any discipline and not just US history.

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