New Book Dispels Common Myths in Pro Sports
by Randy Shaw‚
Feb. 02‚ 2012
If you have read Scorecasting before watching Sunday’s Super Bowl, you will not be surprised to see Patriots Coach Bill Belichick go for it on fourth down rather than punt or kick a field goal. Nor will you be taken aback if even the Giants more conservative coach Tom Coughlin does the same. The reason Belichick and Coughlin are more willing to take what most fans and sports media people believe are risky actions is among the diverse subjects tackled in Sportscasting. The book subjects many common sports beliefs to empirical testing, with often surprising results. Among the most illuminating in addition to decisions about fourth down are the chief reason for home field advantage, the misleading NBA statistic of “blocked shots, ” and the widely held but erroneous view that there are “hot streaks” that helped predict a batter’s next at bat or whether a basketball shot will go in.
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What’s the Matter With Teabaggers?
by Paul Hogarth‚
Jan. 05‚ 2012
In 2004 when progressives were angry, depressed and disillusioned that George W. Bush had won, Thomas Frank wrote What’s the Matter With Kansas? to explain what happened to “middle America.” By 2011, Republicans again controlled Congress, and President Obama did not usher a new progressive era. Now, Frank has a new book out this week – Pity the Billionaire – that describes the Right’s unlikely comeback in 2009-2010. Frank wrote it before Occupy Wall Street took off, but anyone reading the book can appreciate how prescient he was – and how relevant it is to our current discourse. With a humorous writing style that makes it fun to read, Frank describes how the rise of the Tea Party was premised on a Big Lie – and, he believes, only gained credibility because we bailed out the banks in 2008. But as one who already agrees with Frank’s premise, I found much of the book infuriating – as I kept waiting for answers on what could have happened differently. It’s not until the final chapter that Frank offers some thought-provoking solutions that make it a worthwile read.
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Favorite Books of 2011
by Randy Shaw‚
Dec. 15‚ 2011
The past year will not go down as a cultural highpoint, with no novel (or movie) standing out from the pack. I found myself applying my highly recommended 50-page rule more than ever – if a novel does not grip me in fifty pages, and appears unlikely to do so in the next fifty, I go on to the next one. I finish far more nonfiction books, so my favorite list is weighted in that direction. But I did find one recent novel I can highly recommend, Aravind Adiga’s Last Man in Tower. The author of the wonderful White Tiger has come back with an even better follow up, and again raises questions as to why so few novels set in the United States deal realistically with class and social conflict. Here is my list of favorite books for 2011.
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Lunch Bucket Paradise: A True-Life Novel
by Zelda Bronstein‚
Dec. 08‚ 2011
Oakland writer Fred Setterberg’s latest book is an absorbing tale of life in Jefferson Manor, a brand-new working class suburb in postwar California, where hopes are fanned by a booming consumer economy and tempered by prerogatives of class and race. Local readers may remember Setterberg’s evocative reportage for the old East Bay Express. He brings the same sympathetic insight, rich prose and engaging wit to Lunch Bucket Paradise: A True-Life Novel.
As its subtitle suggests, this book is a literary hybrid: a semi-fictional memoir. Born in 1951, Setterberg grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood in the East Bay town of San Leandro. Lunch Bucket Paradise re-creates his boyhood, ending right before he turns 18, which meant, in the late Sixties, old enough to be drafted.
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Why Nonviolent Resistance Beats Armed Struggles in Seeking Regime Change
by Randy Shaw‚
Oct. 13‚ 2011
Recent regime changes in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and other Mideast nations raise the question of whether nonviolent resistance is more effective than armed combat in winning revolutionary struggles. Historically, the iconic revolutions of the Left – the Russian Revolution, Mao’s success in China, Castro’s victory in Cuba – all required military action. And the most recent examples of nonviolent resistance – the Iranian revolution and the “people power” overthrow of Marcos in the Phillipines – did not turn out as those taking to the streets hoped. Yet after reading Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan’s Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, the strategic advantages of nonviolent campaigns appear beyond dispute. The book offers a detailed analysis of why revolutionary struggles succeed or fail, even creating statistical models to prove their arguments. By identifying the criteria that most often determine outcomes of revolutionary struggles, the book also helps us understand which regime change movements will likely achieve their goals.
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Book Review: Chicago Burning
by Carl Finamore‚
Sep. 08‚ 2011
“People Wasn’t Made to Burn” by journalist Joe Allen, reads like a lively, creative work of fiction with its abundance of larger-than-life characters and a seemingly over-dramatized back story of shocking events awaiting one Black family escaping southern rural poverty and landing amidst northern urban racism.
The story includes corruption, greed, a heavy dose of Chicago political intrigue and finally, arson, death and murder. It even has a surprise ending. It has all the ingredients of a late-night bedside read, but it is all too real. It is, in fact, the actual and very personal story of one Mississippi Black share-cropping family that faced multiple tragedies after moving north to Chicago in 1947.
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Jacobs v. Moses: New York City as Laboratory for Urban America
by Randy Shaw‚
Aug. 25‚ 2011
Last year, I read Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown, an insightful 1998 book whose primary author is Roberta Brandes Gratz. I had never heard of Brandes Gratz, but learned that she is a disciple of Jane Jacobs and an unusually astute analyst of urban neighborhoods. Brandes Gratz most recent book, The Battle of Gotham: New York in The Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, expands upon the themes of her earlier work using New York City as a laboratory for assessing what urban development polices work, and which fail. One is hard-pressed to think of another recent book with such a perceptive, nuanced, and common sense approach to assessing how city neighborhoods regenerate. And regeneration rather than large-scale demolition is Brandes Gratz’s essential message, as she shows how nurturing the seeds of neighborhood regeneration consistently proves more cost effective and better for the public than the urban renewal, “bigness as a solution” strategy that still harms NYC and other cities.
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Volunteering: The Challenge of Making a Difference
by Randy Shaw‚
Aug. 11‚ 2011
Arthur Blaustein wants people to volunteer. He is an apostle of volunteerism, spreading the word that volunteering can be a life-altering, “gateway’ experience that leads people to dedicate their lives to making the world a better place. Blaustein’s new book, Democracy is not a Spectator Sport, makes a powerful argument for the personal and societal benefits of greater civic engagement, using personal testimonies to show how volunteering and community service programs “make a difference.” It is a message that few will challenge. The past two decades has seen an explosion in volunteering and community service, as young people join AmeriCorps, VISTA, the Peace Corps, and other programs. The 2008 election campaign also saw unprecedented levels of grassroots volunteer political activism. But if people are volunteering in record numbers, why is the United States becoming more like a plutocracy than a democracy?
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Did San Francisco Look Better Then, Or Now?
by Randy Shaw‚
Jul. 28‚ 2011
San Franciscans have never easily embraced architectural change. And many would argue with good reason, in light of such ill-conceived actions as allowing the demolition of the FOX Theater on Market Street, or the replacement of the fabled City of Paris by the boring Nieman Marcus building on Union Square. San Francisco Then & Now is one of a series of similar books on major cities that could have combined its beautiful photos with a provocative discussion of architectural change. But it misses this opportunity. Instead, it describes contemporary scenes with an enthusiasm bordering on boosterism. But even its contrasting vibrant color photos of the present with dull black and white depictions of past scenes cannot obscure how much more architecturally interesting much of San Francisco once looked.
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Mayor Bloomberg’s New York: A Model or Cautionary Tale?
by Randy Shaw‚
Jul. 14‚ 2011
February 7, 2012
