Michael Lewis

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Just before the 2002 season opens, the Oakland Athletics must relinquish its three most prominent (and expensive) players and is written off by just about everyone--but then comes roaring back to challenge the American League record for consecutive wins. How did one of the poorest teams in baseball win so many games?

In a quest to discover the answer, Michael Lewis delivers not only "the single most influential baseball book ever" (Rob Neyer, Slate) but also what "may be the best book ever written on business" (Weekly Standard). Lewis first looks to all the logical places--the front offices of major league teams, the coaches, the minds of brilliant players--but discovers the real jackpot is a cache of numbers?numbers!?collected over the years by a strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts: software engineers, statisticians, Wall Street analysts, lawyers, and physics professors.

What these numbers prove is that the traditional yardsticks of success for players and teams are fatally flawed. Even the box score misleads us by ignoring the crucial importance of the humble base-on-balls. This information had been around for years, and nobody inside Major League Baseball paid it any mind. And then came Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics. He paid attention to those numbers?with the second-lowest payroll in baseball at his disposal he had to?to conduct an astonishing experiment in finding and fielding a team that nobody else wanted.

In a narrative full of fabulous characters and brilliant excursions into the unexpected, Michael Lewis shows us how and why the new baseball knowledge works. He also sets up a sly and hilarious morality tale: Big Money, like Goliath, is always supposed to win . . . how can we not cheer for David?

Moneyball

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Anne Fadiman

A study in the collision between Western medicine and the beliefs of a traditional culture focuses on a hospitalized child of Laotian immigrants whose belief that illness is a spiritual matter comes into conflict with doctors' methods.

Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

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Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

The Book of Mormon 

Owen Gingerich

Peter J. Gomes

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

Taking Johannes Kepler as his guide, Gingerich argues that an individual can be both a creative scientist and a believer in divine design--that indeed the very motivation for scientific research can derive from a desire to trace God's handiwork.

God's Universe

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Anthony Bourdain

A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook

An instant New York Times bestseller and the follow-up to the mega-hit Kitchen Confidential In the ten years since Anthony Bourdain's classic Kitchen Confidential first alerted us to the idiosyncrasies and lurking perils of eating out, much has changed for the subculture of chefs and cooks, for the restaurant business–and for Anthony Bourdain. Medium Raw tracks Bourdain's unexpected voyage from journeyman cook to globe-traveling professional eater and drinker, and even to fatherhood, in a series of takes-no-prisoners confessions, rants, investigations, and interrogations of some of the most controversial figures in food. Beginning with a secret, highly illegal after-hours gathering of powerful chefs that he compares to a mafia summit, Bourdain pulls back the curtain–but never pulls his punches–on the modern gastronomical revolution. Cutting right to the bone, Bourdain sets his sights on some of the biggest names in the foodie world, including David Chang, the young superstar chef; the revered Alice Waters; the Top Chef contestants; and many more. Medium Raw is the deliciously funny, shockingly delectable result, sure to delight philistines and gourmands alike.

Medium Raw

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Chad Harbach

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

A Novel

At Westish College, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big league until a routine throw goes disastrously off course. In the aftermath of his error, the fates of five people are upended. Henry's fight against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne becomes caught up in a dangerous affair. Mike Schwartz realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life. As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, "The Art of Fielding is mere baseball fiction the way Moby Dick is just a fish story" (Nicholas Dawidoff). It is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment--to oneself and to others.

The Art of Fielding

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Jennifer Robertson

History

Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan

The all-female Takarazuka Revue is world-famous today for its rococo musical productions, including gender-bending love stories, torridly romantic liaisons in foreign settings, and fanatically devoted fans. But that is only a small part of its complicated and complicit performance history. In this sophisticated and historically grounded analysis, anthropologist Jennifer Robertson draws from over a decade of fieldwork and archival research to explore how the Revue illuminates discourses of sexual politics, nationalism, imperialism, and popular culture in twentieth-century Japan.



The Revue was founded in 1913 as a novel counterpart to the all-male Kabuki theater. Tracing the contradictory meanings of Takarazuka productions over time, with special attention to the World War II period, Robertson illuminates the intricate web of relationships among managers, directors, actors, fans, and social critics, whose clashes and compromises textured the theater and the wider society in colorful and complex ways.



Using Takarazuka as a key to understanding the "logic" of everyday life in Japan and placing the Revue squarely in its own social, historical, and cultural context, she challenges both the stereotypes of "the Japanese" and the Eurocentric notions of gender performance and sexuality.

Takarazuka

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Homer

Robert Fagles

Bernard Knox

Has some annotations within the text, otherwise the book is in great condition 

A new translation of the epic poem retells the story of Odysseus's ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.

The Odyssey

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Mara Loveman

Some writing and highlighting in the first chapter

Racial Classification and the State in Latin America

National Colors analyzes the politics and practices of official ethnoracial classification in the censuses of nineteen Latin American countries over nearly two centuries. It shows that, in addition to domestic politics, the ways that states classify their citizens are strongly influenced by shifting international criteria for how to construct modern nations and promote national development.

Samantha Flores

@samantha300045

Books Listed

Following

Followers

Michael Lewis

Moneyball

Anne Fadiman

Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Book of Mormon

Owen Gingerich; Peter J. Gomes

God's Universe

Anthony Bourdain

Medium Raw

Chad Harbach

The Art of Fielding

Jennifer Robertson

Takarazuka

Homer; Robert Fagles; Bernard Knox

The Odyssey

Mara Loveman

National Colors

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Michael Lewis

Moneyball

Anne Fadiman

Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The Book of Mormon

Owen Gingerich; Peter J. Gomes

God's Universe

Anthony Bourdain

Medium Raw

Chad Harbach

The Art of Fielding

Jennifer Robertson

Takarazuka

Homer; Robert Fagles; Bernard Knox

The Odyssey

Mara Loveman

National Colors

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