"It's a grand trip, taking in everything from Charles Dickens to Super Mario and Avatar. The book is meticulously researched, persuasively constructed and benefits from an impressive level of access." —New Scientist
"The Web lets us dive deeper than ever before, though into what is up to us. A new avant-garde is taking the plunge – not underground, but online. For those of us lagging behind, wading rather than diving into art's new cyber-sphere, Frank Rose makes an excellent guide." —The Atlantic
★ "Like Marshall McLuhan’s groundbreaking 1964 book, Understanding Media, this engrossing study of how new media is reshaping the entertainment, advertising, and communication industries is an essential read." —Library Journal
"Captivating . . . We're in the midst of a fascinating – and delirious, often overwhelming – cultural moment, one that Rose, with his important new book, astutely helps us to understand." —Holly Willis, KCET-TV Los Angeles
"The worldwide web has already begun to have an influence on imaginative expression. The Internet, as Frank Rose writes in The Art of Immersion, 'is the first medium that can act like all media. It can be text, or audio, or video, or all of the above. . . .' According to Rose, 'a new type of narrative is emerging – one that's told through many media at once in a way that's nonlinear, that's participatory and often game-like, and that's designed above all to be immersive. This is deep media.'" —Robert McCrum, The Observer
"Compelling . . . The era of the couch potato, argues Rose, is at an end. . . . From Star Wars to Lost ("television for the hive mind"), it is the immersive, 'fractal-like complexity' of storytelling that turns on digital audiences and sends them online to extend the fantasy via wikis, Twitter and blogs." —P.D. Smith, The Guardian
"Tremendously lively and clever . . . An intelligent guide to how technologies have created new opportunities for narrative." —Scotland on Sunday
"As the American Frank Rose argues in his book The Art of Immersion, TV programmes such as the internationally successful drama Lost have spread out from their original shape, partly . . . because scriptwriters have become influenced by games culture." —BBC World Service
"An exciting book which shows how the Internet is changing the world of entertainment. . . . Frank Rose describes an ongoing artistic revolution that breaks with traditional, linear narrative and gives us a new understanding of reality." —TF1 News
"A new media bible." —La Repubblica
"The Internet has altered many habits of life, but is it powerful enough to change the way we tell stories? Frank Rose . . . explains that every new medium has disrupted the grammar of narrative, but all had a common goal: to allow the audience to immerse themselves in the stories that were being told." —La Stampa
"Fascinating . . . [Frank Rose] talks about how the Internet is changing the way we create and consume narrative. He notes that media innovations, such as radio or television, take a few decades before we learn how to best utilize them. TV started out as live broadcasts and ended up creating a new form of narrative. The Internet started out as a digital repository for print journalism, but is now creating a new form of engagement. 'We are ceasing to be consumers of mass media,' says Rose, 'we are becoming participants in social media—a far more fluid environment in which we simultaneously act as producers, consumers, curators, and commentators, sharing our thoughts and perceptions with people we know and people we don't.'"
—Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post
"An essential overview . . . Applications in the academic world are clear (it is already on the syllabi for classes at USC and Columbia), but it also constitutes a prerequisite for those wishing to enter Hollywood, and marketers or PR professionals wishing to engage an increasingly fragmented audience." —International Journal of Advertising
"In his terrific new book, The Art of Immersion, [Frank Rose] captures the need for new thinking. . . . We need tools to tell new stories for new times, and our stories right now reflect our culture: they’re fragmented, dispersed, remixed and remade. They’re networked and participatory and nonlinear." —FilmMaker
"Clear, concise and scrupulously fact-checked . . . For anyone even remotely interested in a how-we-got-here-and-where-we're-going guide to interactive, socially-networked entertainment, it's an essential read." —David Hughes, Empire
"An inquiry into the heart of the culture industry . . . Neither anthropological essay nor geek study, [The Art of Immersion] reflects on the unstable borders of fiction—before and after the digital revolution—and even on the definition of a work of art."
—Les Inrockuptibles
"A near-perfect portrait of the entertainment world in the hour of the digital revolution."
—Benzine
★ "Completely fascinating . . . A broad and deep look at how electronic media are changing story-telling, inviting an immersion that drills down beneath surface information and encourages a deeper level of emotional involvement." —Booklist
"Tells the story of storytelling amazingly well . . . Rose not only examines the changing world of storytelling, but connects it to technology, communication, business, and history. He reminds us that stories are culturally significant and that the way we tell them says a great deal about our societies and ourselves." —PopMatters
"An authoritative tour of the frontiers of amusement . . . Perhaps the 3-D game version is forthcoming?" —Brain Pickings
"It's effing great." —iFanboy
