Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Explains how Billy Beene, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, is using a new kind of thinking to build a successful and winning baseball team without spending enormous sums of money.

Lewis (of Liar's Poker fame) is such a top writer - he makes the business side of a sport I don't even fully understand the rules of (let alone follow) fascinating. It's all about using data to make decisions, rather than relying on human perception and emotions...so topical stuff. Soon to come out as a film, starring Brad Pitt, aparrently(!)

This was a bit different than I expected. I had seen the movie years ago and had kind of assumed that the book was a bit more analytical and the movie had just expanded upon slight narrative threads that may have existed in it, but actually the book is very invested in Billy Beane as a character and spends a lot of time on small vignettes of many players. A lot of the stories are nice little land-of-misfits success stories that can sometimes be a bit cheesey and seem a bit overindulgent, but I still enjoyed quite a bit.

I listened to this as an audiobook from the library. Scott Brick does an excellent job narrating and I can't even really putting my finger on why. He just has a nice, engaging voice that adds to the material.

I'm not sure why, but this non-fiction tale about building an efficient baseball team was fascinating. Maybe the attention paid to supporting characters inside and outside of baseball by author Michael Lewis is what grabbed and held my interest.

Published in paperback by W. W. Norton.

I found this book fascinating. I am not a baseball person. I'll watch a game with my dad on occasion but I don't have cable and rarely go out of my way to watch. This book made the topic very interesting. I appreciate the depth of knowledge even if most the names went over my head.

I would say if you even have a cursory passing interest in baseball or math and statistics; check this book out.