Want to know what books Sean Lahman recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Sean Lahman's favorite book recommendations of all time.
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How to play percentage baseball--and win! Irrefutable mathematical findings.As a result of a lunchtime conversation with Professor Wendell Garner concerning the productiveness of the sacrifice bunt, Earnshaw Cook took on the three-year task of presenting a formal analysis of baseball. His analysis, explained in terms perfectly clear to anyone with college freshman level mathematics, suggests that no one has ever known the true percentages, and if anyone did know them he could manage almost any team into the top ranks of major league baseball. Among other theories that Cook attacks with... more How to play percentage baseball--and win! Irrefutable mathematical findings.As a result of a lunchtime conversation with Professor Wendell Garner concerning the productiveness of the sacrifice bunt, Earnshaw Cook took on the three-year task of presenting a formal analysis of baseball. His analysis, explained in terms perfectly clear to anyone with college freshman level mathematics, suggests that no one has ever known the true percentages, and if anyone did know them he could manage almost any team into the top ranks of major league baseball. Among other theories that Cook attacks with irrefutable mathematical findings are the benefits of the sacrifice bunt, the use of relief pitchers, the traditional batting order, the hit and run play, and the standardization of baseball itself.As with almost any serious innovation, the first edition of this book met with bitter controversy and criticism from some baseball fans, team managers, and sportswriters. James Gallagher in Sporting News wrote, "I do not understand how the Baltimore mathematicians reached their controversial conclusions, but in my book any generalizations about baseball have to be wrong." Yet in 1964 this "Baltimore mathematician," using his scoring index, K.2 factors, base-scoring equations, etc., predicted that the hometown Baltimore Orioles would finish in fourth place behind, in order, New York, Chicago, and Minnesota--with perfect accuracy! less 
Sean Lahman@BlockAndAwe Great book. There have been a few new developments since it was published. đâŸïžđ» (Source)
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In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is âas good as anyone.â Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his... more In this bravura follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award-winning #1 New York Times bestseller The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida.
As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is âas good as anyone.â Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is a high school senior about to start classes at a local college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides âphysical, intellectual and moral trainingâ so the delinquent boys in their charge can become âhonorable and honest men.â
In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear âout back.â Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. Kingâs ringing assertion âThrow us in jail and we will still love you.â His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble.
The tension between Elwoodâs ideals and Turnerâs skepticism leads to a decision with repercussions that will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boysâ fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy.
Based on the real story of a reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers. less Sean Lahman@DanTelvock Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead. The MVP Machine is a great book about whatâs happening in baseball. (Source)
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Light of the Stars tells the story of humanityâs coming of age as we awaken to the possibilities of life on other worlds and their sudden relevance to our fate on Earth. Astrophysicist Adam Frank traces the question of alien life and intelligence from the ancient Greeks to the leading thinkers of our own time, and shows how we as a civilization can only hope to survive climate change if we recognize what science has recently discovered: that we are just one of ten billion trillion planets in the Universe, and itâs highly likely that many of those planets hosted technologically... more Light of the Stars tells the story of humanityâs coming of age as we awaken to the possibilities of life on other worlds and their sudden relevance to our fate on Earth. Astrophysicist Adam Frank traces the question of alien life and intelligence from the ancient Greeks to the leading thinkers of our own time, and shows how we as a civilization can only hope to survive climate change if we recognize what science has recently discovered: that we are just one of ten billion trillion planets in the Universe, and itâs highly likely that many of those planets hosted technologically advanced alien civilizations. Whatâs more, each of those civilizations must have faced the same challenge of civilization-driven climate change.
Written with great clarity and conviction, Light of the Stars builds on the inspiring work of pioneering scientists such as Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, whose work at the dawn of the space age began building the new science of astrobiology; Jack James, the Texas-born engineer who drove NASAâs first planetary missions to success; Vladimir Vernadsky, the Russian geochemist who first envisioned the Earthâs biosphere; and James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, who invented Gaia theory. Frank recounts the perilous journey NASA undertook across millions of miles of deep space to get its probes to Venus and Mars, yielding our first view of the cosmic laws of planets and climate that changed our understanding of our place in the universe.
Thrilling science at the grandest of scales, Light of the Stars explores what may be the largest question of all: What can the likely presence of life on other worlds tell us about our own fate? less See more recommendations for this book...
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