Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Idea but Needs to Provide the Reader More
Comment: This book uses a non-word for its title: [bracketologist]. To me a bracket means the punctuation I used to enclose that word. The editors instead are using it to mean a knockout tournament, the same one that is used for baseball and basketball playoffs, because the terminator at the end of the competing pair looks like a bracket. The idea is to take some topic, such as candy bars, then take a whole bunch of candy bars and put them into a tournament blank, of which the authors provide a sample. Then take each pair in the tournament and decide which you like better. If the two items were Hershey's Kiss and Three Musketeers, for example, I like the Kiss better so I write it into the winner's block to the right. Do this throughout the blank until an overall champion comes out at the end.

Some examples are white wines, indie (that is, independent) rock albums, and memorable speech lines. There are some of real substance, such as "where were you when moments", investment strategies, and fruit. But a lot of them are hype and trite, such as "Sex and the City" wisdom (referring to a particular TV show), NASCAR phrases, and sucker bets. I would have liked to have seen instead US Presidents, mathematical concepts, animal species, and most likely sites for extraterrestrial life.

In a few of them, the authors (a separate one for each tournament) show a lack of judgement. For example, in the "Where were you when moments" tournaments, O.J. outranked Katrina. Huhh? Two deaths outrank 1200, along with much destruction and a lot of misery for an entire city? The Investment Strategies tournament shows a lack of knowledge or concern for the mortgage and credit crisis and for Peak Oil. For example, derivatives are selected over global equities, so preferring a concept twice removed from reality over one that is only once removed. The Mondegreens (misheard song lyrics) tournament does not even consider "mice of Georgia" ("my eyes adored you"), "comma comma comma" ("karma karma karma") or "help me Honda" ("help me Rhonda").

The book leaves the reader out in the cold about constructing his own tournaments. How do you do a tournament on a number of items not a power of 2? (the answer - some entities get byes and automatically win). Some will assume the final finalist that was defeated by the winner should get second place, but that's incorrect, as that finalist has not been compared with anything the winner defeated. And the technique only works with subjective entities. With objective ones, such as biggest Kuiper Belt object or richest man in the world, simply take the maximum number.

But some of these tournaments are interesting, and it may inspire the reader to do a few tournaments in his own life.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: What a HIT!
Comment: This book was by far the biggest hit on Christmas with the male adults in my family. I bought it for my Dad but by 18 year old brother and 37 year old husband kept trying to take it from him. They sat for hours reading the brackets, guessing which answer should win and then having huge discussions when they disagreed. My husband already asked for this book for his Father's Day gift and I have heard him tell at least 10 people about this book already. Definately the best purchase I made this Christmas and I'm planning on ordering more for upcoming gifts.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Give It a Try
Comment: The overall concept behind THE ENLIGHTENED BRACKETOLOGIST is that people can figure out the best of everything by putting together a bracketed tournament, similar to what is done during the NCAA basketball tournament. 102 different subjects are bracketed (101 are listed, but there is a bonus category of Baby Boy Names in the Coda). The bracket selections and their ultimate winners have been selected by over 90 different people and those people are usually experts or are heavily associated with their chosen field. So Ken Jennings put together the brackets for Game Show Catchphrases, the authors of THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GUILTY PLEASURES put together the brackets for Guilty Pleasures, and former Presidential speech writer Curt Smith put together the brackets for Presidential Speeches. The categories of brackets in the book are:

March Madness Moments
Where Were You When Moments
Animation Characters
Ad Slogans
Alt-Country Songs
American Beers
American Plays
Bald Guys
Black-and-White TV Programs
James Bond Gadgets
Dodosaurs
Bob Dylan Cover Songs
Candy Bars
Mondegreens, or Misheard Lyrics
Celebrity Sports Couples
CEOs
Spokescharacters Who Will Shill for Food
Cheese
Chick Flicks
Crosswordese
Classic Comedies
Conspiracy Theories
Corporate Jargon
Dogs for the Ages
Marital Arguments
Elmore Leonard Novels
Elvis Costello Songs
Emoticons
Endangered Species
Cooking Tools
Economic Indicators
Film Deaths
Frank Sinatra Songs
Freshwater and Saltwater Flies
Fruit
Game Show Catchphrases
Sportscaster Signature Calls
Memorable Speech Lines
Golf Swing Thoughts
Horses for the Ages
Jock Films
Guilty Pleasures
Guitar Solos
Hairstyles
Hip
Indie Rock Albums
Innovations in Sports
Inventions
Investment Strategies
Most Likely to Survive the 21st Century
Jew/Not a Jew
Kings and Queens of England
Latin Grammar
Long Songs
Longevity Strategies
Magical Sports Numbers
Male Vices
Meaningless Sports Statistics
Most Jersey
Mythological Figures
NASCAR Phrases
Newspaper Headlines
Opera Arias (Male)
Paul Simon Songs
Perfect Book Titles
Pickup Lines
Punctuation
Short Books
Plastic Surgery Disasters
Political Blunders of the Last 50 Years
Political Hot Buttons
Presidential Speeches
Priceless Things
Rednecks
Red Wines
Rivalries
Samuel L. Jackson Films
Scrabble Words
SEX AND THE CITY Wisdom
Shakespeare in Film
Sidekicks
Simple Things
Sins Against the Language
Sport/Not a Sport
Sports Books
Sucker Bets
Talk Show Hosts
Tell Me Again Why They're Famous
Troll Models
TV One-liners
Typefaces
Underdogs
Video Games
Wedding Gifts
White Wines
Women's Magazine Sex Cliches
Women's Undies
Your Boss's Annoying Habits
Yiddish Phrases
Shakespeare Insults
Baby Boy Names

The book does have a few drawbacks. There was no overall standard of how "contestants" were chosen therefore there is an overall lack of connection to the book. Different bracketeers used different criteria for their choices and some apparently just used their own personal preferences without any thought at all. Some of the categories are so limited in their appeal that it was very difficult to even care about what had been written, for example Opera Arias (Male)--I had heard of three composers and that was it; the rest made no sense to me. Lastly, though this is more a book of entertainment, at times it is political and leans towards the leftist side.

Despite these drawbacks, I found THE ENLIGHTENED BRACKETOLOGIST to be entertaining and at times informative.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Quite Fun to Read and thought provoking
Comment: This book inspires one to apply bracketology to just about any multi-option conundrum. Fun to read, can't necessarily agree with every one of their conclusions but that is what makes the book fascinating.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Bracket Play
Comment: I was inspired by what I see as new sort of mindmapping... A wonderful look see into the minds of others and the decisions they make.

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