MICHAEL LEWIS IS AN ACE: Just finished MONEYBALL, Michael Lewis's brilliant examination of how GM Billy Beane has made the low-budget Oakland A's into perennial winners. The answer? Hard work and statistics. That's right, Mr. Beane may not be the kind of guy you'd like to hang out with all the time (he swears a lot, throws temper tantrums, and comes across as fairly one-dimensional), but he's definitely the guy you want directing your major league ballclub. Why? Because in a results-driven business, Beane only cares about results. In other words, he thinks like an owner rather than an employee. While the rest of baseball focuses on myths and hunches, Beane and his henchmen live for the numbers -- and not just old-time, deceptive stats like RBI and batting average. These guys live for the obscure but more reliable numbers of the hardcore baseball statisticians, permutations like OBS (on-base plus slugging percentage). Among the many things Beane and team learn and espouse: walks are stupid; ditto sac-bunts; ditto steals; and so forth.

What's so great about this book? It's vintage Lewis, placing the reader inside a human drama that just happens to be about baseball. I couldn't read it fast enough, just like my experience with LIAR'S POKER and the retitled LOSERS, which respectively tell tales of NY high finance and presidential politics. Neither field makes makes for page-turning intrigue on its own, but in the capable hands of Michael Lewis they become the perfect backdrop for cautionary, ribald tales about life and human strength and frailty.

As a researcher, too, I found myself nodding along. Too many marketers rely on hunches and happenstance, when they're only a (relative) few dollars away from real knowledge. Conventional wisdom may be conventional, but it ain't always wise. Hats off to Lewis for delivering that same moral wrapped in real entertainment. Go read it.