Reader’s Diary

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.

John Gimlette

This is an account of Gimlette’s travels with Putnam Flint, an 86-year-old World War II veteran.  They retraced the route followed by Putnam’s unit from Marseilles to Austria, comparing war-torn Europe to modern Europe.  The book is refreshingly free of  “greatest generation” rhetoric and provides an interesting look at parts - especially rural parts - of France, Germany, Austria that don’t often appear in travel books.

Eric Weiner

Eric Weiner chose a travel itinerary based on how happy citizens of countries report themselves to be.  He went to Iceland (happy), to Moldova (unhappy), and to several other countries.  A self-proclaimed “grump”, he seems sincerely interested in the nature and causes of happiness and this curiosity makes the book not only a good travelogue but an interesting reflection on human nature.