Monthly Archives: October 2011

Michigan State Ferries, by Les Bagley: a review

This is, I imagine, the sort of book Arcadia’s business model intends: A well thought out picture book whose captions actually tell a coherent story. Nicely done.

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Sony’s Reader

I’ve been saying for two years that my Sony Reader’s an excellent ebook reader, but that the store’s broken. They seem to have finally noticed the problem, and this morning they’re offering a new version of the PC/Mac software required to access the store on older Readers. I’ve already discovered a couple quirks, but it’s clearly better.

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Hacking the Academy, by Dan Cohen and Tom Scheinfeldt: a review

This is a short book, compiled by editors Cohen and Scheinfeldt, consisting of about 50 essays and fragments exploring the shortcomings and future of the modern university. The authors have a special concern about the impacts of new technologies. It’s well worth your time to read.

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ExpressSOS

Stand in line no more.

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Solid Fool’s Gold, by Bill James: a review

A fun, quick read, with just enough substance to get you thinking. I enjoyed.

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The 1986 Elias Baseball Analyst: a review

Far better than the first edition. The text portion of this book consists entirely of team essays, most of which are surprisingly playful investigations of issues raised by the team’s season or the team’s players. They are also more open about their methods in this volume. The best of these are quite fine.

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Authority and Disorder in Tudor Times, 1485-1603 by Paul Thomas: a short review

This reads for all the world like a well-polished set of class notes for a college course with the book’s title. One would assume the course to be intended for sophomores or juniors.

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The Score by Richard Stark: a short review

Not my cup of tea, but certainly readable. Decidedly hard-boiled. 3 1/2 stars for this.

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Baseball Between the Numbers, edited by Jonah Keri: a review

The book is built around 27 questions (outs), organized into 9 chapters (innings)–questions like “Why are pitchers so unpredictable?” and “Is there such a thing as a quadruple-A player?” The 28th (extra innings) chapter is, unsurprisingly, about scouts and stats. The chapters usually have a single author, though there’s some obvious cross-fertilization and two have co-authors. Each chapter explores the title question, and often related subjects, in some detail, testing hypotheses and discussing the results. The precise tools they’ve used are not usually directly displayed, but the authors show enough data that you can do a parallel analysis if you’re so inclined. (Some of the tools are fully described in the Glossary or the notes, and it isn’t hard to find the details on the web.) The results are occasionally surprising (ignore the subtitle, folks; it’s a marketing ploy), but the explanation’s usually convincing.

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Pitching in a Pinch by Christy Mathewson: a short review

Perhaps the prototype for all “inside baseball” books written since. There’s some interesting stuff in here, but much of what Matty has to say is pretty cliched. Frankly I was hoping for more.

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