Category Archives: non-fiction

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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 … Continue reading →

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. … Continue reading →

In Proofiness, author Charles Seife explores the power of numbers in our lives, especially specious numbers, and argues that they undermine our democracy.  His discussion of bogus mathematical arguments draws on real world events, and he presents an interesting analysis … Continue reading →