MoneyballANDStumbling on Wins

Michael Lewis          W.W. Norton & Company, 2011. (movie tie-in edition)
 &
David J. Berri and Martin B. Schmidt          FT Press, 2010.


 3.5 / 5.0 

 2.0 / 5.0 

I decided to review these books together since Stumbling on Wins and other books in the sports economics genre are being published on the coattails of Moneyball's success.

Before I read SoW, I would have characterized Moneyball as an economics book with a few stories thrown in. After finding SoW wears that mantle perfectly, I began to see what makes Moneyball a different and much better read.

Professional sports are about money. This is not really news and it is not surprising when both books admit this up front. What is startling and what the two books reveal is that the people holding that money make decisions based on almost anything but solid, economic logic. SoW covers or I should say, uncovers the NBA, NFL, NHL and NCAA. (It also has a short chapter on MLB which is basically a summary of Michael Lewis' Moneyball). Lewis' book focuses on Major League Baseball and specifically the Oakland A's. Both books explore the inefficiencies of professional sports. How they do it, though, makes all the difference.

When Helping HurtsHow to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor . . . and Yourself

Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert          Moody Publishers, 2009.

 5.0 / 5.0 

When Helping Hurts wasn't the most enjoyable book I've ever read, but it was one of the best. Surely this is partly because I work in a very poor country. Questions about the poor and doubts about how to help them come to me every day, but don't they come to every Christian, if not with the same frequency?

The Traveler's GiftSeven Decisions that Determine Personal Success

Andy Andrews          Thomas Nelson, 2002.

 2.0 /5.0

In The Traveler's Gift Andy Andrews tries to combine a Christian self-help book with a fantastical journey through history. The protagonist is a down-on-his-luck guy that experiences short visits with some of history's great leaders, Anne Frank and an angel. His message is that equipped with seven secrets of success from history anyone can take charge of their life and turn around their fortunes.

Washington: A Legacy of Leadership

Paul Vickery and Stephen Mansfield          Thomas Nelson, 2011.

 3.0 /5.0

While I'm not fascinated in particular with George Washington, I thought reading through Thomas Nelson's The Generals series might fill in gaps in my knowledge of American history.  They have quite a few book in the series already, so when I finish them all it would be nice to have a idea what has changed for the men that filled the rank over the years.

When reading history I appreciate the approach the editor Stephen Mansfield is taking with this series.  To paraphrase him: enough with the hagiographies, enough going to the other extreme and deconstructing and debasing all our ancestors.  I like to see as many sides of the story as possible and make up my own mind.  It seems Mansfield and his authors are trying to appeal to that idea with The Generals.

Vickery did a great job explaining the world of Washington's youth.  The reading is a little drier after he gets into Washington's military life.  He fleshes out a detail here and there, but mainly sticks to a writing style that resembles battle reporting.  Little is included about Washington's presidential terms.  Leaving out the commander-in-chief years leaves this one a pretty short read.

Like the rest of Washington's biographers, Vickery had less to work with than if he was writing about another founding father.  For example, the Adams family library takes up stacks and stacks at the Massachusetts Historical Society's library.  After George Washington's death, though, his wife burned all of his personal correspondence.

The legacy left of George Washington by this book is an American man we would recognize; full of ambition, adventure and sometimes arrogance. Unfortunately, the piety, civility and honor that tempered him in the eighteenth century would probably keep him out of leadership altogether in the twenty-first.

*I received a copy of the book for review from the publisher.  I had to write a review - good, bad, or ugly.  You can do the same at booksneeze.com.*

Surprised by OxfordA Memoir

Carolyn Weber          Thomas Nelson, 2011.

 5.0 /5.0

I have yet to make the switch to Pro football.  Hailing from the American South, the college game is still king in my mind and I know Sunday is for church.  (Although I've seen my share of adoring worshippers huddled around Saturday broadcasts from their favorite conference.)  Marrying a girl from the North, however, has meant holidays and vacations spent in cold urban places, which has meant lots and lots of  NFL.  I find myself in a weird twilight: defending the professional gridiron against scoffs from my home turf buddies, while at the same time feeling not quite normal watching millionares play football on the night that used to be dedicated to last minute assignments and watching reruns of the Waltons.  Such is the mixed-up mess with which anyone in the middle of a conversion might identify.

For a Christian, the conversion can feel like just a mess at times.

"Regina," I asked as I sat next to her, "why is conversion so hard? [author's italics]   Actually, it wasn't that hard, in retrospect.  It's the post-conversion that is."  I looked at her plaintively.  "Why?"  I whined, my voice sounding like a child's.

The voice is Carolyn Weber's in her Surprised by Oxford, a superbly told memoir of her heady, heart-wrenching and magical first term at Oxford University.  When the author leaves London, Ontario, for graduate studies abroad, she carries the hurt of a broken home, an unrelenting self-reliance, and the memory of one Christian professor from the University of Western Ontario.  Horribly homesick, but excited beyond measure to study in the English language's oldest institute of learning, Carolyn was confident she could find answers in Oxford.  She just didn't know all of the questions, or at least, as Rilke said, she didn't know yet how to love the questions.

Carolyn eventually adjusts to her new life across the Atlantic and the "lost in translation" moments are few.  This memoir has less fish out of water and more hound of heaven.  The title is intenionally styled after C.S. Lewis' Surprised by Joy.  There is much to treasure in the book for a Inkling's lover since Weber quotes liberally from Lewis and Tolkien and retraces many of their steps at the University.  As those men did, Weber looks to literature to inform and inspire and consistently quotes from classic works, especially from the Romantics.  Be prepared for a few Wikipedia searches if you want to keep up with her quotations.   She has the mind of an apologist, but the heart of a poet.  The beauty of her quest is not lost among the search for answers.  Over the Michaelmas, Hilary and Trinity terms Oxford reveals its glory and a mysterious theology student reveals his heart.  Both mirror the greater romance happening in Caro's life as the Lover of Her Soul continues to surprise her.

*I received a copy of the book for review from the publisher.  I had to write a review - good, bad, or ugly.  You can do the same at booksneeze.com.*

Christian Encounters Series - J.R.R. Tolkien

Mark Horne               Thomas Nelson, 2011.

 3.0 /5.0
In his biography, simply titled J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Horne does two things that he admits his famous subject could never bring himself to do - write a overtly Christian work and dominate his readers.  Whether speaking of Tolkien's youthful surroundings, his literary influences or his love for his family or faith, Horne rarely misses a chance to point out the obvious crossovers between Tolkien's life and work.  Highlighting Tolkien's Christian faith is the more forgivable branch of Horne's incongruous treatment.  The book is part of the Christian encounters series from Thomas Nelson and Tolkien's Christian heritage is probably unknown to many of his fans.

The highlight of the book to me, was the author's emphasis on the T.C.B.S. club.  Tolkien's original cadre of creative minds is often superseded in accounts by the later formed Inklings.  Although most of the members of the club were killed in the Great War, the early impetus for Tolkien's sub-creation came from the time he shared with these friends.

I was, however, a little surprised to see some changes to Tolkien's cannon that were not explained either in the text or in the endnotes.  Horne lists Father Giles of Ham among Tolkien's writings (most readers know it as "Farmer" Giles of Ham) and changes the spelling of some of Tolkien's dwarves (i.e. Norri and Dorri).  These may be acceptable alternatives of which I am unaware, but there is no commentary on the changes.

In all, J.R.R. Tolkien is a short and straightfoward book that serves as the briefest of introductions to the writer's life.  For a more complete and traditional biography, I recommend Humphrey Carpenter's  J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography.  Colin Duriez wrote a great book detailing Tolkien and Lewis' realtionship called Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship.  Some of the themes that were hinted at in this book are, among others, explored in Tom Shippey's J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century.  I do think Mark Horne's book is the perfect introduction to Tolkien for a high school student writing a research paper on the author which, admittedly, was me fifteen years ago.

*I received a copy of the book for review from the publisher.  I had to write a review - good, bad, or ugly.  You can do the same at booksneeze.com.*

Eiger Dreams

John Krakauer          Lyons Press, Reprint 2009.

 4.5 /5.0
Before it symbolized the apex of middle school backpacks and rarified polyester winter fleece, "the north face" generally referred to the most cantakerous, onerous side of a norhtern hemisphere peak.  Return to simpler, more dangerous times with John Krakauer's first book.  Eiger Dreams is twelve tales of climbing drawn from stories of Krakauer's circle of mountaineering peers as well as from sorties of his own.  All but one of the stories have been printed before -some in Outside and Smithsonian, the sorts of magazines doctors put in their waiting rooms to convince the clientele that they are about to probed by a very interesting person.  The short, dense accounts resemble a collection of short stories and come with the inherit benefits and deficits of such an edition.  Each chapter is a complete yarn unto itself, yet I could never stop with just one.  The better stories made me want keep the journey going and after a sub-par tale I had a stubborn hope that the next would be better.  To avoid a similar dilemma I suggest you start with a few tedious days in basecamp with "Chapter IV - On Being Tentbound" before ascending to the summit of an iconic, southern Alaskan peak in "Chapter XII - The Devils Thumb".  Fill in the steps of your ascent with:
X The Burgess Boys
V The Flyboys of Talkeetna
VII Chamonix
IX A Mountain Higher than Everest?
III Valdez Ice
II Gill
VI Club Denali
XI A Bad Summer on K2
VIII Canyoneering
I Eiger Dreams