Imus Versus Imus.('The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything')(Book review)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 23-APR-07

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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Last month, on the eve of the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, Bloomsbury published a novelty called "The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything." In the estimation of the book's editors--Richard Sandomir, a sports-media reporter at the Times, and Mark Reiter, a literary agent--bracketology is a peerless tool for adjudication. Basically, you set up a bracket, or knockout draw, as in a tennis or basketball tournament. Graphically, it looks like a tree lying on its side. Through a series of binary pairings (or, to sports fans, head-to-head matchups), you narrow down thirty-two contestants to sixteen, then eight, then four, then two, until a winner emerges. This can work across a range of subjects, as long as there are value judgments to be made. Instead of Kentucky versus Ohio State, you get Miller versus Pabst. Sandomir and Reiter collected a hundred and one imaginary draws, to determine the best entrants in such categories as Elmore Leonard Novels, Golf Swing Thoughts, Bald Guys, and Latin Grammar....

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