Your Mid-Week Experiment
Have you made a plan to talk to your dad about Michael Lewis?
Welcome to the always free, reader-supported mid-week edition of The Experiment. If you’d like to support my work, buy my Alamo book, buy some Experiment merch, drop some coins in the PayPal fountain, or become a paid subscriber. But even if you don’t, this bugga free.
It’s State Fair time in Dallas! This is a Texas State Fair Bloody Mary that includes a turkey leg, two slices of bacon, a caramel-covered apple, roasted corn on the cob, a corn dog, and a funnel cake. Also, they give you a beer while you wait for them to finish assembling it.
We’ve got almost as much fun stuff in this week’s mid-weeker. Let’s get to it:
In the battle of (as a Twitter wag put it) your dad’s favorite writers, Michael Lewis > Walter Isaacson, though SBF is an obvious fraud, and people need to be less impressed with the appearance of money (Michael Lewis)
That said, apparently Lewis’ SBF book is only good in comparison to Isaacson’s Muskography (Washington Post)
Here’ an excellent profile of Lewis that makes a common criticism of him, and for that matter of Isaacson: He got too close to his subject. (Samantha Subramian)
There’s new Tessa, y’all!
Hey, look! An oped in the Gray Lady that doesn’t both-sides politics! (Bob Inglis — yes, that, Bob Inglis!)
Deft touch on this review of Marty Baron’s memoir in the Times (Sewell Chan)
Religious children have a harder time telling fact from fiction (some study)
Speaking of religion, the Orioles won the American League East. If this means nothing to you, just smile and nod.
Knowing that my Orioles were following a rebuilding process established by the Astros, a friend recommended I read The MVP Machine, which was well-researched and needed a stronger editor, and Astroball: The New Way to Win it All, Ben Reiter’s favorable portrayal of how Houston relentlessly used corporate efficiencies in search of the winning edge. In what is a truly a nightmare for anyone who has written a book, no sooner was his book published than did the world find out that the Astros had another advantage: They were cheating up a storm. Ben missed it entirely.
To his credit, he did a podcast called The Edge about it, and I can’t stop listening to it. If you’re a writer who likes baseball, this is as must-listen as it gets.
Now the Orioles, who lost more than 100 games two seasons ago, have won 101 games and are ready to start a playoff run on Saturday. Why do I think the Orioles won’t turn out line the Astros? They hug. And they have Adley.
I can’t decide if The Night Manager is good. It certainly has some good qualities, but does it overcome its veddy, veddy British sound and video editing?
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Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House. The New York Times bestseller is 44% off and the same price as a paperback now!