Books

“Tom Crago’s imaginative and highly amusing Grand Crew is an intoxicating blend of “Sex in the City”, fast living, the value of friendship, and longing. It is a clever romp through a wine list via Melbourne, Paris, Barolo and the “Big Boy”. It draws on Crago’s intimate and lighted hearted wine and food circle and love for the good things in life. Ultimately Grand Crew is a comedy about setting up a restaurant in Melbourne, shaky finances, and wishful thinking. I really enjoyed Crago’s wine universe, energetic writing and sense of fun. Grand Crew should be nominated for Australia’s Wine List of the Year!”
– Andrew Caillard, 2022

“Witty, familiar and at times delightfully absurd, Grand Crew celebrates Melbourne restaurants and Australian wine in a global context, cementing their place on the culinary world stage. It’s long overdue.

The same way a foodie film makes you hungry, I found myself pouring a glass of wine every time I sat down to read Grand Crew, and while you don’t need to be a wine aficionado to enjoy this novel, it’s clear that Crago is.

Grand Crew balances aspiration with hedonism and constantly reminds us that it’s not the bottle you pour that matters, but the people you share it with.”
– Sofia Levin, 2022

“This is a book about the wonderment – and its opposite – of being overseas on business. It is a kind of poker-faced essayistic comedy about tipping and strip bars, food (glorious and inglorious), taxis and vast, enthralling and unedifying quantities of liquor. It’s very cool, very dry, very unlike anything about the Great World you have ever read. But it’s mordant, compelling and supersmart. It’s also funny. If you pick it up you’ll keep reading it.”
– Peter Craven, The Age 9 August 2014

“The experience of losing track of time, feeling liberated from external pressures and utterly immersed when playing a video game is known in game design circles as “the flow”. Every game, says video game developer Tom Crago, is a journey. Which makes the “flow zone” a perfect metaphor for the thrills of life on the road, of marrying business and pleasure through travel. Crago’s addiction to travel began when he was a schoolboy and the world came to Adelaide for formula one. For all the emphasis on boy’s own pursuits, partying, drugs and male bonding rituals, Flashbacks from the Flow Zone is mercifully free of machismo or bravado. And while Crago’s exploits are more likely to appeal to men than women, his reflections on friendship with the opposite sex will endear him to women readers.”
– Fiona Capp, The Age 10 May 2014

“In a globetrotting adventure story that is part travel, part business, Crago tells all about deals done in bars, limos and poolside.”
– Paul Cleary, The Australian 20 June 2014

“Crago’s is a rare travel memoir in which the worldly, sophisticated video game-producing author is never more than a couple of gin and tonics away from the wide-eyed teenager from Adelaide, obsessed with cars and hungering for new experiences. If you only read one paean to well-earned hangovers, 17 hour international flights and the kindness of taxi drivers this year, make it Flashbacks from the Flow Zone.”
– Andrew P Street, TIME OUT

“A no holds barred chronicle through some of the most interesting cities during some of the wildest years of the video game business.”
– Henk Rogers, TETRIS COMPANY

“Wow, someone who travels more than me! Tom Crago’s travel account offers a funny, insightful and humbly perceptive view of the world as he sees it: through the windows of countless planes, trains and extremely fast automobiles!”
– Missy Higgins