Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis is an analysis of Billy Beane's goal during his time as the Oakland A's GM in 2002: turning an under .500 team with the lowest payroll in the Major Leagues, into the top dogs of the AL West using witchcraft— sorry— sabermetrics.

Moneyball was and still is incredibly influential.

Baseball as a sport doesn't do change very often. Michael Lewis uprooted traditionalist practices in the sport and changed baseball forever, in some ways good (popularizing modern sabermetrics) and in some ways bad (encouraging the unsustainable demands of efficiency under capitalism).

This is not the perfect book. For example, it was jarring to read about the Oakland A's of the 2000s and realize the contributions of the Big Three (Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito) were glossed over, considering the 2002 Oakland A's were notable for allowing less runs than other teams, not scoring more. Additionally, Moneyball does not lend credit to the traditional scouting that decided the A's first-round draft pick Eric Chávez or their signing of international free agent Miguel Tejada.

This book is objectively a good one. Getting into sabermetics is daunting regardless of how interesting it might be, and Moneyball took the pressure off. If you're someone interested in data science, mathematics and/or baseball, this is a dense but still relatively short read that does an excellent job at explaining the concepts it presents and providing context along the way.