Book and Movie Reports by Ed

Book report: Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won, by Toby Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim Do you like sports? Do you like the analysis of sports, where you get an idea of what’s really going on with sports? Then you are going to love this book. It starts out with a great anecdote from the lives of the two authors, who met at a boys summer camp and had a classic sports problem to solve: what to do with the one totally inept kid on their softball team, where everyone had to bat and field? The traditional solution – stick him in right field – didn’t work. But they found a non-traditional and clever solution to the problem that did work. I won’t tell you what that was, so you’ll enjoy it if you read the book, but it beautifully sets up the tone for the rest of the book. They examine a number of sports situations where the conventional wisdom just doesn’t make sense. For example, everybody knows that there is such a thing as home-f...

Book Report: Gladiator, by Philip Wylie In 1930, author Philip Wylie published the novel Gladiator (no connection to the Russell Crowe movie), about a man who is super-strong, invulnerable to bullets, jumps great distances, and runs as fast as a train. In 1932, the character Superman was created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. As someone deeply interested in Supermanic Studies, I had to read Gladiator to see how much it might have influenced the creation of Superman. There are certainly many similarities between the characters of Hugo Danner, protagonist of Gladiator, and Superman. Chief among these are the powers listed above. Hugo Danner also has hair described as so black it is almost blue, which is exactly how I’ve always thought of Superman’s hair. Plus, as a child, Hugo Danner builds a “fortress” out of boulders and logs where he can be alone, something like Superman’s own Fortress of Solitude. Finally, both are the sons of scientists. The theme of Gladiator is ho...