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Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game
Billy Beane, general manager of MLB's Oakland A's and protagonist of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, had a problem: how to win in the Major Leagues with a budget that's smaller than that of nearly every other team. Conventional wisdom long held that big name, highly athletic hitters and young pitchers with rocket arms were the ticket to success. But Beane and his staff, buoyed by massive amounts of carefully interpreted statistical data, believed that wins could be had by more affordable methods such as hitters with high on-base percentage and pitchers who get lots of ground outs. Given this information and a tight budget, Beane defied tradition and his own scouting department to build winning teams of young affordable players and inexpensive castoff veterans. Lewis was in the room with the A's top management as they spent the summer of 2002 adding and subtracting players and he provides outstanding play-by-play. In the June player draft, Beane acquired nearly every prospect he coveted (few of whom were coveted by other teams) and at the July trading deadline he engaged in a tense battle of nerves to acquire a lefty reliever. Besides being one of the most insider accounts ever written about baseball, Moneyball is populated with fascinating characters. We meet Jeremy Brown, an overweight college catcher who most teams project to be a 15th round draft pick (Beane takes him in the first). Sidearm pitcher Chad Bradford is plucked from the White Sox triple-A club to be a key set-up man and catcher Scott Hatteberg is rebuilt as a first baseman. But the most interesting character is Beane himself. A speedy athletic can't-miss prospect who somehow missed, Beane reinvents himself as a front-office guru, relying on players completely unlike, say, Billy Beane. Lewis, one of the top nonfiction writers of his era (Liar's Poker, The New New Thing), offers highly accessible explanations of baseball stats and his roadmap of Beane's economic approach makes Moneyball an appealing reading experience for business people and sports fans alike. --John Moe.
Price: $6.99
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Macroeconomics
McConnell and Brue’s Macroeconomics: Principles, Problems, and Policies is the leading Principles of Macroeconomics textbook because it is innovative and teaches students in a clear, unbiased way. The 17th Edition builds upon the tradition of leadership by sticking to 3 main goals: help the beginning student master the principles essential for understanding the economizing problem, specific economic issues, and the policy alternatives; help the student understand and apply the economic perspective and reason accurately and objectively about economic matters; and promote a lasting student interest in economics and the economy..
Price: $85.00
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Faith Undone: The emerging church - a new reformation or an end-time deception
Is the emerging church movement just another passing fad, a more contemporary approach to church, or a bunch of disillusioned young people looking for answers? In fact, it is actually much broader and is influencing Christianity to a significant degree. Grounded in a centuries-old mystical approach, this movement is powerful, yet highly deceptive, and it draws its energy from practices and experiences that are foreign to traditional evangelical Christianity. The path that the emerging church is taking is leading right into the arms an interfaith perspective that has prophetically profound ramifications..
Price: $7.77
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Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big
Touted as a Ball Four for the new millennium, Jose Canseco's Juiced promises to expose not only the rampant use of performance-enhancing substances in baseball (with steroids replacing the amphetamines of Bouton's day), but the painfully human flaws of its heroes as well. A steroid devotee since the age of 20, Canseco goes beyond admitting his own usage to claim that with the tacit approval of the league's powers-that-be he acted as baseball's ambassador of steroids and is therefore indirectly responsible for "saving" the game. Chief among his claims is that he introduced Mark McGwire to steroids in 1988 and that he often injected McGwire while they were teammates. According to Canseco, steroids and human growth hormones gave McGwire and Sammy Sosa (whose own usage was "so obvious, it was a joke") the strength, stamina, regenerative ability, and confidence they needed for a record-setting home run duel often credited with restoring baseball's popularity after the 1994 strike. Although he devotes a lot of ink to McGwire, Canseco envisions himself as a kind of Johnny Steroidseed, spreading the gospel of performance enhancement, naming a number of players that he either personally introduced to steroids or is relatively certain he can identify as fellow users. Because Canseco plays fast and loose with some of the facts of his own career he provides fodder for those looking to damage his credibility, but in many ways questions of public and personal perception are what raise the book beyond mere vitriolic tell-all. Those willing to heed his request and truly listen to what he has to say will find Juiced to be an occasionally insightful meditation on the workings of public perception and a consistently interesting character study. --Shane Farmer.
Price: $6.94
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Newcomer's Handbook for Moving to And Living in the San Francisco Bay Area: Including San Jose, Oakland, Berkeley, And Palo Alto (Newcomer's Handboks)
Extensively updated and revised for 2006, this 504-page new edition maintains its strong focus on San Francisco, but expands greatly its coverage of the entire region, especially Silicon Valley. Of the 174 pages devoted exclusively to discussion of neighborhoods and communities, 52% describe San Francisco neighborhoods and North Bay communities, while 48% focus on the East Bay, Peninsula, and South Bay towns. This edition also includes a new, detailed map of San Jose designed to accompany the in-depth treatment of each of its neighborhoods, reflect the importance of the city, and complement the more broadly focused South Bay area map. From Santa Rosa to San Francisco to Vallejo, from Walnut Creek to Oakland to Newark, and from San Bruno to San Jose to Los Gatos, this Newcomer's Handbook® provides its readers with the most up-to-date information on housing styles, costs, and trends; redevelopment; and all the other niceties of Bay Area life, including education! and childcare, transportation, cultural life, and much more..
Price: $8.00
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Vindicated: Big Names, Big Liars, and the Battle to Save Baseball
In 2005, Jose Canseco blew the lid off Major League Baseball's steroid scandal -- and no one believed him. His New York Times bestselling memoir Juiced met a firestorm of criticism and outrage from the media, coaches, clubs, and players, many of whom Canseco had personally introduced to steroids -- with a needle in the ass. Baseball's former golden boy, Rookie of the Year, onetime Most Valuable Player, and owner of two World Series rings was called a liar. Now, steroids are back in the headlines. Record-breaking athletes are falling from grace, and the infamous Mitchell Report confirmed the names of major leaguers who have indeed used steroids while others remain under investigation. The answer is clear: Jose Canseco told the truth. And why wouldn't he? He started it all. Finally, in Vindicated, Canseco picks up where Juiced left off, revealing details even more shocking than in his controversial first book. He spills never-before-implicated names -- arguably the biggest in the game of baseball -- and explores the mystery of one celebrated player about whom key information was suddenly excised from Juiced at the last minute. He talks candidly about what the Mitchell Report did -- and didn't -- get right, why steroid use became so rampant, and how his life has changed since he tore the lid off Pandora's box. Lest there be any doubt about theveracity of his claims, Canseco subjected himself to three lie detector tests, one of which was conducted by a former FBI special agent and top polygraph examiner who investigated the Unabomber, Whitewater, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Transcripts of those taped interviews are also included in this straight-talking examination of the current state of baseball. This time, he's not just out to clear his name. He's out to clean up the game..
Price: $11.50
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A Wayward Angel: The Full-Story of the Hell's Angels by the Former Vice-President of the Oakland Chapter
The Hell's Angels. The name conjures up images of toughs on Harleys terrorizing the law-abiding; of wild brawls and wild sex; of drugs and cruelty, beatings, and even murder. Their lifestyle, we think, is horrifying, but it's also perversely fascinating, for there's an alluring freedom in such nihilism. Still, nobody knows what it's like to be an Angel except an Angel-an Angel like George Wethern, for many years the vice president of the Oakland Chapter.
Until he found himself in reluctant service to the courts, Wethern was the quintessential Angel, tough as they come, one of the most important drug dealers on the West Coast-a man who loved bikes, fights, women, and drugs; a man who knew the deepest secrets of Angel life. Arrested, strung out on drugs, in despair, he testified in several major trials against Angel members-and then went into hiding.
In A Wayward Angel, we witness killings, drug deals worth millions, "picnics" that are nothing short of orgies, the inner codes and inner workings of the club and its bizarre initiation rites. It is a vivid portrait of the chaos of postwar California, the awful early collision of the drug scene and the alienation of modern life, a story as American as can be. This is a powerful book, and not for the squeamish; but it's fascinating and important, terrifying because it's real.
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Price: $7.25
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Gun, with Occasional Music (Harvest Book)
Gumshoe Conrad Metcalf has problems-there's a rabbit in his waiting room and a trigger-happy kangaroo on his tail. Near-future Oakland is a brave new world where evolved animals are members of society, the police monitor citizens by their karma levels, and mind-numbing drugs such as Forgettol and Acceptol are all the rage.
Metcalf has been shadowing Celeste, the wife of an affluent doctor. Perhaps he's falling a little in love with her at the same time. When the doctor turns up dead, our amiable investigator finds himself caught in a crossfire between the boys from the Inquisitor's Office and gangsters who operate out of the back room of a bar called the Fickle Muse.
Mixing elements of sci-fi, noir, and mystery, this clever first novel from the author of Motherless Brooklyn is a wry, funny, and satiric look at all that the future may hold.
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Price: $3.82
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The Black Panther Party: Service to the People Programs
The Black Panther Party represents Black Panther Party members' coordinated responses over the last four decades to the failure of city, state, and federal bureaucrats to address the basic needs of their respective communities. The Party pioneered free social service programs that are now in the mainstream of American life. The Party's Sickle Cell Anemia Research Foundation, operated with Oakland's Children's Hospital, was among the nation's first such testing programs. Its Free Breakfast Program served as a model for national programs. Other initiatives included free clinics, grocery giveaways, school and education programs, senior programs, and legal aid programs. Published here for the first time in book form, The Black Panther Party makes the case that the programs' methods are viable models for addressing the persistent, basic social injustices and economic problems of today's American cities and suburbs..
Price: $12.35
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