The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (review: 4/5)

I have never cared that much about football. Playing can be a blast, but I never watch it and I have only a vague sense of when the college & pro seasons begin. So, I was surprised that I enjoyed this book so much. The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game has a couple of stories going on. One, it's about the evolution of football. And it's also about race and class in America. Michael Lewis starts with the evolution of the NFL strategy and the market for players. The NFL has roots as a rushing game, but later changes in official rules and informal bias led to the rise of passing and the notable West Coast offense. The new passing offense of the NFL befuddled some observers---quarterbacks thought to be below-average were able to perform well beyond expectations. And great quarterbacks, even better. It was the system, with all the right parts in place, that made it all work.

With passing as the preeminent strategy, you need premium quarterbacks. And with high-value quarterbacks, the opposition fields players (e.g. Lawrence Taylor) who want to destroy those quarterbacks. Which means that the formerly hum-drum role of left tackle becomes essential, as the protector of the quarterback's blind side. And the demand in the NFL trickles down through college and into the high school level.

Enter Michael Oher, one of the top left tackle prospects in years. Explosive, nimble, flexible. Oh, and also 6'6" and 322lbs. But he could have been stereotypical fall-out of inner city neglect. He was one of 13 kids with no father raised by a junkie mother in a blighted, predominantly black area of Memphis. Not good, all too common. But, through happenstance he got connected with a white family with money, social connections, high expectations, and a deep, abiding love---a social version of the West Coast offense. A potential statistic becomes a potential star.

The Book on the Bookshelf (review: 4/5)

The Book on the Bookshelf is a book about books... and shelving. If that doesn't catch your attention, then there's no hope. I've lost you already. It's a study of part of our relationship with books, the ways we created, studied, shared, and stored them. Henry Petroski touches on developments in bookbinding, the evolution of outward-facing spines, and the history chained books, among other things.

I love the research that Petroski did. In many of the chapters scrutinizes old photographs, architecture, and especially the illustrations that can be found in old books---Renaissance scholars in their studies, Medieval monks in their libraries, etc.. How big are the books? How are they bound? How are they physically organized? How do they lay? A book is both a container of information and itself a piece of historical evidence. Pretty cool.

The 4 Hour Workweek (review: 3/5)

Good book. I posted a while ago about my initial doubts and then how excited I became about this book as I began to read it. It all turned out fairly well, though I think the glow is gone. Despite the hokey title, 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich seems to be pretty well grounded. It isn't so much about the nuts and bolts of financial managment---you won't find a lot of financial info about IRAs or 529 plans or whatever. It's more about what author Tim Ferriss calls lifestyle design. Here's how it boils down:

Find ways to minimize interruptions and maximize time for what you want. Don't stay in a crappy job. Don't wait to retire---take mini-retirements along the way. Start a business selling products online. Outsource or automate most of the business. Use currency arbitrage to live well elsewhere.

The business side all sounds easy enough---and he lays out the steps pretty clearly---but as with most of these schemes, the magic doesn't happen until you... y'know... actually do the work. The sections on respecting and maximizing your productive time are solid, though. Those are the parts that got me the most excited, and probably the most worth re-visiting.

If I have one reservation, it's Ferriss' nonchalance about lying. It has to be at least a half-dozen times that he suggests prevaricating to some degree, whether it's used to avoid interruptions, to work from home or elsewhere, or to take some other step towards the long-term goal in lifestyle design. I don't mean to taint his character---I don't think he's dishonest---but to someone like me who prefers to just shoot straight, it seems like careless advice.