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Rating: 
Summary: Left-Right Symmetries in Baseball and Physics
Review: As a left-hand thrower in baseball and right-footed kicker in American football in my youth, I was fascinated by the enormous amount of information on left-right asymmetries presented by the erudite Professor McManus. However my confidence in the validity of the flood of information from his extraordinarily broad set of sources was marred by finding the Professor dead wrong on contributions from the two small areas that I know better than he does -- baseball and parity in physics.
The main advantage of batting left-handed is not due to that batter being closer to first base but to the easier job the left-swinger has in hitting a right-hand pitcher's curve ball. And switch-hitters do not have an "advantage because of the unpredictability of their shot making" but because, batting left-handed against right-handed pitchers and right-handed against left-handed pitchers, they hit curve balls better.
Also, the "asymmetry" in the force on a compass needle near a current that McManus considers that Oersted ignored in early failures to detect that force in the infancy of physics, vanishes if the experimenter uses a current to makes his own magnetized needle. Indeed, it was just that left-right symmetry of electromagnetic forces that led physicists to believe that it was likely that the other fundamental forces would be similarly
symmetric. Hence, the violation of that left-right "parity" symmetry which Yang and Lee postulated and that Wu, Ambler, and others demonstrated, was very important. I agree with McManus that the "mistake" that he describes is "incredible", but it is his mistake and not that of physicists.
Rating: 
Summary: Very interesting for both left & right handers
Review: I'm a 'lefty', 'southpaw', 'cack-handed' etc. My daughter bought me this for my birthday. It was a very interesting read. The only downside was that some of the chapters seemed too long, at over 30 pages? There were points when the topic of the chapter seemed exhausted, and was strung out, and on more than one occasion my interest waned, only to perk up on the next page when some new issue was introduced, and off we went again? What I liked best was the little anecdotes, like how it took years for Canada to decide whether to drive on the Left or the Right, with British Columbia & the Maritime Provinces not changing over until after the First World War, and then still over a number years between 1920 and 1924. Similarly how Western & Eastern Austria drove on different sides of the road until 1938. A fascinating read.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Read
Review: This book is easy to read and penetrates to great depth on large numbers of subject. A well written and interesting argument, the author manages to link a wide range of arguments. I really enjoyed this book.
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