Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game -- Michael Lewis

<em>Moneyball</em> is a quest for the secret of success in baseball. Following the low-budget Oakland Athletics, their larger-than-life general manger, Billy Beane, and the strange brotherhood of amateur baseball enthusiasts, Michael Lewis has written not only the single most influential baseball book ever (Rob Neyer, <em>Slate</em>) but also what may be the best book ever written on business (<em>Weekly Standard</em>).<br /><br /><em>I wrote this book because I fell in love with a story. The story concerned a small group of undervalued professional baseball players and executives, many of whom had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. But the idea for the book came well before I had good reason to write it--before I had a story to fall in love with. It began, really, with an innocent question: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games?<br /></em><br /> With these words Michael Lewis launches us into the funniest, smartest, and most contrarian book since, well, since <em>Liar's Poker</em>. <em>Moneyball</em> is a quest for something as elusive as the Holy Grail, something that money apparently can't buy: the secret of success in baseball. The logical places to look would be the front offices of major league teams, and the dugouts, perhaps even in the minds of the players themselves. Lewis mines all these possibilities--his intimate