Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life by Michael Lewis
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Book Reviews of Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life
Book Review: Good ideas - A little short and undeveloped
Summary: 3 Stars
I liked Mike Lewis' basic premise in the book, but I just thought the book was awfully short. It was more like a magazine article than a book. It was only 100 (very small) pages and a bunch of those pages were photographs. But I did agree with the basic sentiment of the importance of "battling one's way through all the easy excuses life offered for giving up" and that now we bestow self-esteem on children at birth rather than have them earn it through accomplishments attained with hard work and sacrifice. I hope that parents everywhere take an hour and read this short book.Book Review: Coach
Summary: 2 Stars
Michael Lewis has captured the lessons that many of us learned a long time ago with the old style of Coach. The kind of Coach who cared a great deal about his players but never showed it . Todays youth and their Parents cant take the 'Coaches' style anymore because it doesnt cater to their self esteem and constantly being told everything they do is ok even if it isn't! Old coaches demonstrated tough love all the time and you lived with it or you moved on! Basically you learned to grow up! Richard Farnham, former Director of Athletics at the University of Vermont 1973-2003 Book Review: Could have been so much more
Summary: 3 Stars
Moneyball was a genius book in my opinion - an examination of baseball statistics that challenges the historical significance of sacred stats such as RBI and batting average. However, it appears that Mr. Lewis was banking on the success of that book when he hurriedly put together this short memoir of a high school baseball coach that seemingly impacted his life in great ways. Mr. Lewis manages to package that nice story up in barley 70 pages.
The thought was nice, however, it very much lacked any kind of character development and real substance. Just as we get to meet his "Coach" the book is almost over.
This is a nice little read that you could get through in an hour or less, however, if you have a hearty appetite and want to sink your teeth into a meaty book, this is not for you. Skip it and read Tuesday's With Morrie.
Book Review: A Partial Defense for a "Play Hard" Coach
Summary: 2 Stars
Michael Lewis has written a very brief memoir in which he remembers the importance that his baseball coach had on his life by expressing confidence in Lewis, looks into the influence that Coach Fitz had on a few other plays and uncovers the unwillingness of today's parents to let the coach "make men out of boys".
The high point for me in this book had nothing to do with Mr. Lewis or the book. I simply found myself day dreaming about a coach who had a similar influence on me, Coach Joe Page of Pacific High School in San Bernardino, California. Coach Page was Lee Marvin's cousin and looked like him except Coach Page had an even meaner expression on his face. He had our attention before he opened his mouth. When he spoke, our hearts palpitated. And he expected us to accomplish great things. And we surprised ourselves by how well we did. I was more proud of my A in Coach Page's class than I was in becoming a valedictorian of my class. I haven't been in as good a physical shape since then. Coach Page also taught me lifeguard skills which I wouldn't have learned otherwise. I've been much more confident around the water ever since.
Coach Fitz was a coach of the same style . . . expecting and demanding that everyone give their all. I would have liked to have heard more about Coach Fitz in the book. But there's too little.
The story about Mr. Lewis is a pretty good one. But there aren't enough stories about other athletes.
And the description of current parents and their children would have been more impressive if the parents had had their say. As a defense, I suspect that this book won't make the grade. Many who read this book will say that Coach Fitz should go. That wasn't Mr. Lewis's intent, but it may well be his effect.
Other than reminding me of Coach Page, I'm sorry that I read this book. It didn't deserve to be published in my judgment . . . although Coach Fitz sounds like someone who should have a good biography written about him.
I was most disappointed by the photographs which rarely contain images of the coach or the people mentioned in the book.
Book Review: Works both as social commentary and portrait of one man
Summary: 4 Stars
Michael Lewis has combined a healthy curiosity about how organizations behave with an engaging narrative style to produce the eye-opening Liar's Poker, Moneyball and New, New Thing, among other books.
In this short portrait of his high-school baseball coach, Lewis merges a study of that individual with an affirmation of the effect of his values on the boys who played on his baseball team at a toney prep school, along with an essay as to why such a manly, hard-core method is pretty much forbidden by the realities of parental pressure today.
The book fundamentally expresses gratitude for the author's good fortune to have been at an elite high school in a spartan era. It does not fully explain the basic motivation of the coach, but leaves a melancholy impression that his type of dinosaur is needed now more than ever, just when the system seeks something different.