In this brilliant, entertaining book, Michael Lewis, formerly a reporter
for the Wall Street Journal, demonstrates how rational assessment of
talent can make all the difference in the success of a sports franchise
(in this case, the Oakland Athletics). All the more surprising is how
benighted many baseball organizations remain, relying on the primitive
guesswork of scouts and old-time general managers. The book also has a
lesson to teach most businesses: if baseball executives, who have a wealth
of information to evaluate talent in their profession do such a poor job,
what does that say about other fields, in which much less information is
available and methods of evaluation are even more imperfect?
-D.Venturo
SR 2007