320 pages
English language
Published April 9, 2004 by W. W. Norton & Company.
I loved this book. It combines two of my most favourite subjects: Baseball and Data Science. The story behind Billy Beane's success of making a low budget team competitive is fascinating and you will have a hard time in putting this book away until you're finished. It's a real page turner for everyone who enjoys the data science apporach to baseball :)
If you liked the film, you'll love this. The stories are both interesting and fascinating and the same time. A true insight into the running of a Major League club.
An excellent look at behavior, statistics, and rationality, this book does suffer from jumping around a bit and lacks a clear focus. That said, Michael Lewis tells great stories, and carries multiple threads; if he ever learns to make better transitions or weave them together more fluidly, he could be a household name like Gladwell or Michener.
You don't have to be interested in baseball to like this book, but you have to be interested in critical analysis or behavioral studies, because this book is really more about the culture of baseball more than the sport itself, and how that insular culture allows it to avoid self-reflection.
I don't follow baseball and aside from a single season of little league I've never played the sport so you can characterize me as a lower than casual fan (when I root for a team I'm usually just rooting for the city). Having said that, I really enjoyed this book, which is about baseball but really about conceptions of value. Michael Lewis' writing style is easy and approachable even in the midst of convoluted and seemingly boring subjects (I mean he made baseball statistics interesting, thrilling at times). There isn't an abundance of intellectual rigor here but then I wouldn't have been interested if there were. This is a really entertaining non-fiction beach read that strikes the perfect balance of NPR profundity and opinionated style.
