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Dave Zirin’s Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games We Love is 188 pages of trashing egotistical and wealthy sports franchise owners.  What’s not to like? (Other than the sad reality of what professional sports has become in the U.S. )

And I still can’t believe that the Washington D.C. football team sells beer in the bathroom.  Seriously?

Recommended for anyone who loves sports, but refuses to pay $8 for a Coors Lite.

I first heard of Big Leagues: Professional Baseball, Football & Basketball in National Memory by Stephen Fox when I was reading this New York Times story about the development of the jump shot in basketball.  Figuring that this was right in my wheelhouse — historic, useless sports trivia — I decided to get it from the library.

Which did not have a copy.  Odd, but not unheard of.

So I bit the bullet and bought a copy online.

While a bit long (and dense), it was a great read for anyone interested in the history of sports in America.  Chapters cover fandom, racism and money, and the popularity of “national teams.” Each of the nine chapters can be read standing its own, which gives the book something of a disjointed feeling.

As a whole, the book provides some great insights about why these three sports evolved as they did, and how they reached the heights they enjoy in our society today.

Read reviews from Kirkus and the NY Times.

Playing with the Enemy: A Baseball Prodigy, World War II, and the Long Journey Home by Gary Moore is a bookend to something I read last fall, A Measureless Peril.

Written by his son, it tells the story of small-town (Sasser, IL) baseball phenom Gene Moore.  Moore was scouted and signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers and was expected to play major league baseball – until World War II intervened.

The book was a bit less academic and more sentimental than what I usually read, but don’t let that discourage reading it.  Playing With the Enemy is a good reminder that we should appreciate what we’ve got, rather than dwell on what we never had.

John stands in front of U-505, captured by the US Navy off the coast of West Africa shortly before D-Day.

Thanks to John for the book recommendation, and for getting us to the Museum of Science and Industry to check out U-505.

Read about the book on Amazon here.

Fortune’s Fool by Fred Goodman tells the story of the recording industry through the tale of Edgar Bronfman, Jr. and his gamble on Warner Music Group (and the recording industry in general).

While interesting at times, it’s tough to recommend it.  The first 200 or so pages cover the history of the Bronfman family and how they acquired their fortune, before turning to the history of the recording industry and how it all began to fall apart in the late ’90s with Napster.

It doesn’t really get interesting (or particularly relevant) until the last third of the book, and Warner Music (and others) try to figure out how to continue making money in recording in the age of MP3s.  I’ll give away then ending:  they don’t, but Steve Jobs and Apple do.

Goodman seems to have strong understanding that litigation is the act of desperate companies, while transformative companies succeed through innovation.

And so it was that while I was about halfway through the book, Warner Music Group was sold for $3.3 billion.

Read the New York Times review of Fortune’s Fool.

Perhaps not everything, but a Eduardo Porter provides some fascinating insights about why we value the things we value, and what that means in our lives.  Recommended for the behavioral economist in your life.

Reviews from the NY Times and the LA Times.

The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum is well described by its subtitle, Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.

But I probably would have gone with CSI: New York (Prohibition Era).  If you know what Jake Leg is, then you know what I’m talking about.

Either way, it was quite interesting.  A good mix of history, science and politics.

Reviews from the NY Times and the Washington Post.

The title of C.J. Chivers Pulitzer Prize winning book refers to the AK-47 (and its lethally improved successors, the AK-74 and AKM).  The book provides a fascinating history of human combat since the American Civil War, largely through the view of the rifle, its designers and its users.

The automatic designed by Kalashnikov in 1947 (“Avtomat Kalashnikova”) represents the rare triumph of a Soviet mass-produced product that was superior to its Western (American) counterpart.

A quick sample:

“For people who study the universe of disorder, automatic Kalashnikovs serve as reasonably reliable units of measure.”

It is much stronger on history than on current events.  Overall, an excellent read.

Reviews from the NY Times and Washington Post.

What really blew me away about this book was the following realization:  even given the thousands of hours I’ve wasted in my life playing video games, I have never played a single game Tom Bissell covers in this entire book. Clearly, I need to buy an X-Box and play more first person shooters.

An interesting (if quick) read, but ultimately the book didn’t convince me that video games really do matter.

Read more from the Times and Wired.