On the Brink » You had to know that the ongoing economic downturn was going to generate more than its fair share of books. For years to come the events and all that led to them will be studied and analyzed, looking for patterns, looking for answers. And already we are beginning to see a steady stream of books seeking to make their mark. Too Big to Fail sought to be a definitive account, but was clearly too quick to store shelves to be that. More relevant to the long-term historical record is On the Brink, the account of Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury from 2006 through to the time that President Obama moved into the White House.Is this book business? Politics? Memoir? I hardly even know how to categorize it. Those categories all overlap as Paulson weaves together this account of the crisis as he saw it and, in his unique position, sought to overcome it.

This Week’s Bestsellers » Last week I said that I had been given a reprieve. With only one new book added to the list of bestsellers, I finally had a chance to catch up. Well, I did quite well, even if not spectacularly so. I got through Willie Mays which was quite a long book and have nearly finished out On the Brink. Assuming that I finish that book up this afternoon, that leaves me with only Anticancer remaining on my to-do list.It turns out that this week is part two of my reprieve. Just one new book found its way onto the list this week, and it only just managed it, squeaking on at #15. Scott Patterson's The Quants describes "How a new breed of math whizzes conquered Wall Street and nearly destroyed it." If I understand the premise correctly, the book tells of some of the hedge fund managers who made fantastic amounts of money in the lead-up to the economic downturn, contributing to the disaster and witnessing their own personal disasters through it. It sounds like it will be interesting enough.

Willie Mays » Though biography/memoir is the leading genre in this 10MillionWords project, few that I've read in this category have been traditional biographies. Most have, instead, been memoirs and often memoirs of celebrities who, honestly, will never be worthy of a full-length biography. It was nice, then, to read Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend by James Hirsch. This is a biography that is traditional in every way and, to my knowledge, the first authorized biography of Mays.Willie Mays is, of course, a man who needs little introduction. His contribution to the game of baseball is widely known and his status as a hero of the game is forever cemented in the record books. Though his reputation has been tarnished a little bit by remaining in the game too long and by eventually being loosely linked to performance enhancing drug scandals (such as they were in the 60's), he remains a uniquely respected player.