In the past, Marshall McLuhan has sagely advised book buyers to "turn to page 69 of any book and read it. If you like that page, buy the book." Like everything else, this got sucked into the Magical Internet Machine and popped out on the other end as a brilliant blog, which exhorts authors to send in a description of their book's 69th page, and whether they think it's a fair representation of their book. So far, the test seems to be working pretty well. In order to further improve the data set (everything I do, I do for science), I gave it a shot on David Cay Johnston's new book, Free Lunch: How The Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You With The Bill). Page 69 focused on the exemption of professional sports teams from anti-monopoly laws, explaining that this is why London has 13 soccer teams, while New York only has two basketball teams, and Los Angeles has no football teams ("so long as the city remains teamless, the owners of football franchises use the threat of moving to extract money through public financing of new stadiums, rent rebates and other official favors.") This happens to be a personal obsession of mine, and so Johnston's book just went from being a book I want to read, to one I will read. You win again, McLuhan.
