Reader’s Diary

John Battelle

Internet search: what it is, how it’s done, and how it turns into money is the topic of this book.  Battelle gives looks at the past, present, and future of search.  While the emphasis is on the 800 pound gorilla of Google, he also recounts the stories of its predecessors and competitors.  It’s an interesting book on a topic that’s taken so much for granted that it’s hardly ever examined.

William R. Forstchen and Newt Gingrich

“Days of Infamy” continues the alternate history storyline begun in “Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th“.   The plot centers around a Midway-like battle immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor.  There’s lots of military action based in intelligent counterfactual speculation and none of the first book’s faults.  My only complaint is that it takes Forstchen and Gingrich too long to crank these things out.

Ian Ayres

This book shows how huge databases combined with cheap massive computer power allow mathematical techniques like regression analysis to be applied to business, medicine, sports, and entertainment.  It’s an interesting book full of real-world examples that’s accessible to the non-mathematically inclined reader.

(Note: Plagiarism accusations have been made about some of the contents of “Super Crunchers”.)

Jessica Livingston

This collection of interviews with founders of start-up companies is interesting but limited: every tale is a success story filtered through the “heroes’” memories.  The author is a former investment bank marketing VP and current venture capitalist.  A journalist would have asked more penetrating questions and, possibly, gone beyond the conventional dot com era myths.

What about the guys who didn’t make it, the founders pushed out of their own companies, and the early empolyees who saw their equity diluted by venture capitalists?   You’ll find none of that here, nor will you find much about then new model “Web 2.0″ start-up that doesn’t take much, if any, outside investment.

Jimmy Breslin

New York cops Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa killed at least eight people for the Mafia.  The murders were at the behest of  Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, an underboss in the Luchese crime family.  The go-between between the cops and the mob was drug dealer Burt Kaplan, who, being Jewish, was ineligible for Mafia membership but was intimately involved in mob life.  Kaplan testified against the cops at their trial in 2005 and 2006 and is the “good rat” of the book’s title.

“The Good Rat” is a beautifully-written account of a sordid story. Breslin combines the columnist’s mastery of detail with a cinematic selection of scenes.  The result is an allusive book made up of precisely-rendered incidents.  There are probably more detailed or more analytical books on the “killer cops”, but there can’t be any that are more pleasurable to read.

Update: I encourage readers to look at the comment below and follow the link.  The comment writer questions Breslin’s veracity and journalistic ethics: something I’m not qualified to judge.  Breslin’s book is impressionistic and well-written, but is it accurate, does it give the whole picture, is it even fair to the people whose lives were ruined by Casso, Eppolito. Caracappa, and Kaplan?  It makes me wonder if “a beautifully-written account of a sordid story” can be a form of pornography.

Nicholas Pileggi

This is the biography of New York gangster Henry Hill and  was basis for the movie “Goodfellas“.  The Lufthansa robbery of 1978 is the high point of the book.  It’s not a romantic picture of gangland life.  Hill and his companions weren’t reluctantly violent, or even cold-bloodedly violent, they were enthusiastically violent.  While it’s not as good a book as the movie was a movie, it’s an interesting, sometimes unsettling read.