At almost $300 for the hardback, The Routledge Handbook of Role-Playing Game Studies isn't likely to end up on my bookshelves, but wealthier gamers can buy it here.
Is it worth it? No idea, though I do wonder how long human beings can keep writing stuff like this now we have LLMs. An excerpt:
No AI hallucinations there, I'll give it that, but why bother with the accent in "Tekumel" if you aren't going to say what it means? (It's an emphasis mark, ie the word is pronounced TAY-koo-mail, but there's no point including the accent here if you aren't also going to write "Mórdor" when discussing Lord of the Rings and "Wiscónsin" in the section on TSR.)
Still, maybe I'm a tad biased towards the hard sciences. This diagram will tell you if it's the book for you or whether you'd rather buy the Vulcanverse series and have $225 left over:
