by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 2011
Hardly groundbreaking, but a well-conceived and -executed addition to the burgeoning movement of stats-based sporting...
In a Freakonomics for sports, an economist and a sportswriter use the power of data analysis to debunk some of the sports world’s conventional wisdom.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Wertheim’s (Strokes of Genius: Federer, Nadal, and the Greatest Match Ever Played, 2010) familiar, straightforward style effectively complements the reams of data provided by Moskowitz (Finance/Univ. of Chicago) in this examination of a series of sports-related issues, including home-field advantage, the effectiveness of minority coaches and the hoary adage that defense wins championships. The conclusions they draw range from startlingly persuasive to shrug-inducing, a combination that results, perhaps, from the overall credibility of their arguments and the recent profusion of similar literature that makes once unthinkably counterintuitive arguments less eye-opening. Perhaps the authors’ most compelling—and pot-stirringly controversial—argument is the contention that home-field advantage, a statistically credible phenomenon in every sport, is almost exclusively a result of referee bias, itself a product of the psychological effect of home fans exhorting officials to make calls that favor their team, a subconscious influence even the best officials cannot overcome. Less convincing is their examination of the efficacy of performance-enhancing drugs. While they show a plausible link between low income and usage—a phenomenon that occurs in multiple countries, a logical result of those with less to lose and more to gain trying to cheat their way to success—they fail to account for players who have used drugs that either cannot be tested for or in such a way that they managed to avoid detection. Also, old-school fans will undoubtedly have trouble embracing concepts like there being no such thing as momentum and the attribution of “hot” and “cold” streaks primarily to random chance.
Hardly groundbreaking, but a well-conceived and -executed addition to the burgeoning movement of stats-based sporting analysis.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-59179-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2010
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by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 2012
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
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by Bonnie Tsui ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 14, 2020
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.
A study of swimming as sport, survival method, basis for community, and route to physical and mental well-being.
For Bay Area writer Tsui (American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods, 2009), swimming is in her blood. As she recounts, her parents met in a Hong Kong swimming pool, and she often visited the beach as a child and competed on a swim team in high school. Midway through the engaging narrative, the author explains how she rejoined the team at age 40, just as her 6-year-old was signing up for the first time. Chronicling her interviews with scientists and swimmers alike, Tsui notes the many health benefits of swimming, some of which are mental. Swimmers often achieve the “flow” state and get their best ideas while in the water. Her travels took her from the California coast, where she dove for abalone and swam from Alcatraz back to San Francisco, to Tokyo, where she heard about the “samurai swimming” martial arts tradition. In Iceland, she met Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, a local celebrity who, in 1984, survived six hours in a winter sea after his fishing vessel capsized, earning him the nickname “the human seal.” Although humans are generally adapted to life on land, the author discovered that some have extra advantages in the water. The Bajau people of Indonesia, for instance, can do 10-minute free dives while hunting because their spleens are 50% larger than average. For most, though, it’s simply a matter of practice. Tsui discussed swimming with Dara Torres, who became the oldest Olympic swimmer at age 41, and swam with Kim Chambers, one of the few people to complete the daunting Oceans Seven marathon swim challenge. Drawing on personal experience, history, biology, and social science, the author conveys the appeal of “an unflinching giving-over to an element” and makes a convincing case for broader access to swimming education (372,000 people still drown annually).
An absorbing, wide-ranging story of humans’ relationship with the water.Pub Date: April 14, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-61620-786-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
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