Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The only reasons I didn’t give this book 5 stars is that it was a little slow in the second quarter and that I’m not at all a baseball fan, with the exception of one season of trying to learn all the Red Sox players only to see them all leave the team the following season- catching me completely by surprise and making me vow never to give away my love like that again. Necessary run-on sentence.

I love data and statistics though and from that perspective, this book is such a joy. If only more people took an interest in what statistics can and cannot tell us, the world would be a more logical and effective place.

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Has Anyone Seen the President? by Michael Lewis

Has Anyone Seen the President? by Michael Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pretty interesting, especially Bannon's thoughts, and especially interesting as I view them through the prism of 2020. But it's not a complete book or even a complete thought. It feels like the first part of a two-part podcast but there is no second part.

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The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis

The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read a lot of behavioral economics, and I've read Kahneman and Thaler, but I was missing the context of the history of Kahneman and Tversky, followed later by Thaler, being the inventors of this discipline. I was also missing the context of the in-between location of the discipline between psychology and economics, but more importantly as the source of strife between psychologists and economists. This book also expressed my frustrations with my economics classes, and I'm even more annoyed now that I realize my economics professors were basically just ignoring research that was at that point already 20 years old. I was also interested in learning about how this research came out of Israel. I was maybe a little less interested in the ins-and-outs of Kahneman and Tversky's personal relationship and about which Lewis left me a bit confused.

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The Coming Storm by Michael Lewis

The Coming Storm by Michael Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I got this audiobook for free as part of my $15/month Audible membership. (Free as in, it didn't use up a credit.) It's about 2.5 hours long.

There are a lot of really interesting things in this book regarding government data collection and weather data. I don't read enough books about data, especially considering how important it is to our society today. Especially now that I live in an area prone to tornados, I was especially interested in the tornado section.

I don't understand the people who seemed not to like this book because they claim there is an attack on Trump contained within. Either the information regarding the Trump administration and data dissemination and restriction is correct or incorrect. None of the reviewers claim it's incorrect (except one person, more on him later). Let's say you support Trump and you think the information is correct but negatively described, well, go ahead and explain why it's okay to take away data (paid for with public funds) from public use that would help the public. There was one reviewer that claimed he formerly worked for AccuWeather, and that Lewis was incorrect about AccuWeather. He wrote an entire blog post basically confirming exactly what Lewis said.

I took a star away because I really don't like the entire concept of audiobooks that are only available on Audible. I think you should be able to verify sources in print. An audiobook-only format, especially for a book this short, strikes me as a glorified podcast. Also, I really didn't like the ending.

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Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis

Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World by Michael Lewis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is a collection of 5 essays Michael Lewis wrote after the financial meltdown in 2007-2008. Each essay is a comic look at the disaster of the financial crisis in each of 5 countries: Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany, and America (specifically at a state and local level in California).

It's very interesting as an examination of how many people in the financial marketplace had no idea what they were doing, and it's also pretty entertaining and humorous. On the other hand, it's unnecessarily racist against the peoples it examines, with the exception of Americans who somewhat get a pass because supposedly the American culture and abundance itself exceeds what the human mind is designed to cope with. That presentation of huge groups of people, their motivations, and their histories undermines Lewis's expertise of financial players and events.

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The Big Short by Michael Lewis

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is fascinating and depressing and enraging in equal parts and everyone in America should read it.

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