When I got on the internet in 1991, it wasn't the Web. It was the internet. (And men were real men, women were real women, and little green aliens from Alpha Centauri were real little green aliens from Alpha Centauri.) I spent a lot of time in newsgroups (where some of my earlier, stupid posts are still preserved for all time in usenet archives), and in particular rec.sport.baseball. I learned, from convincing arguments with sound statistics and methods, that most common baseball statistics were meaningless. Runs, RBIs, batting average - all nearly worthless for measuring the ability to win games or to predict that ability into the future. This wisdom is shunned by the anti-intellectual, good-old-boys network of baseball and by the media.

Moneyball is the tightly written story of how the right manager for the right team at the right time finally broke the barrier to these ideas in major league baseball, with the result that the Oakland A's have simultaneously been among the top three teams in total games won, and the lowest three teams in total payroll, for five years in a row.

Billy Beane is the iconoclastic manager, prepared for his role by a baseball career that failed even though his althletic style and classic baseball physique made him look like a great ballplayer. The Oakland A's management refused to spend money but supported Billy in every other way. And the baseball establishment continues to undervalue players who don't look right, or who don't have the right (meaningless) statistics.

I highly recommend this book even to all; baseball fans will learn a lot, and people who either know nothing or far too much about baseball will still enjoy a great read from a talented writer.

The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics. William Easterly.
Globalization and its Discontents, Joseph E. Stiglitz

Stiglitz and Easterly both talk in depth about the failure of the first-world economic instutions, the World Bank and IMF in particular, to make a positive difference in world poverty. And both take a while to cut to the chase, both draw some blood but also throw some wild punches, and both avoid other obvious conclusions.

Easterly takes half his book to name his main villains, corrupt governments and the financial experts who enable them. But his world still seems populated by earnest men in suits who really would like to see an end to poverty. Stiglitz sinks his fangs to the gums into IMF, Larry Summers, and Robert Rubin, for following rigidly ideological prescriptions with arrogant certainty (low inflation uber alles, high interest rates as needed, and free flow of capital) even after these prescriptions are challenged as ineffective or counterproductive. Stiglitz connects the dots as far as saying that these rich bankers favor their own interests over those of developing countries. Beyond that, his rage seems triggered by a perception that these villains would rather see millions in poverty rather than question their own opinions. The step he doesn't take, though, is to say that they may have reasons for preferring this state of affairs. In other words, he doesn't go all the way to Zinn, Chomsky, and the rest.