To call Macrophenomenal the best book ever written about basketball is like calling Citizen Kane the best film ever made about a wealthy media magnate with a mustache. Created by the editors of the 4-year-old website Freedarko.com, this epic work is filled with bizarre stats (e.g., “the cancer effect,” a measure of the malevolent influence that certain otherwise talented players exert on their respective teams), illustrations, charts and an Aztec calendar predicting the havoc that ensues each time the Bobcats and Hawks meet head-to-head. But Macrophenomenal is not just a basketball book—it is part revolutionary manifesto, part scientific treatise and part wistful ode to the post-modern American spirit. Sure, it’s infuriatingly esoteric at times (Ron Artest’s style of play: “dry humping of the apocalypse”?!), but for the FreeDarko collective, appreciating the sport means decoding it. This book is pro basketball’s Rosetta Stone. JOSHUA NEUMAN
1. The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac by The FreeDarko Collective (Bloomsbury USA)
2. The Vampire Archives: The Most Complete Volume of Vampire Tales Ever Published by Otto Penzler, ed. (Vintage Books)
3. Conversations with Robert Evans by Lawrence Grobel (Rat Press)
4. I Saw You…: Comics Inspired by Real-Life Missed Connections by Julia Wertz, (Three Rivers Press)
5. Lowboy: A Novel by John Wray, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
6. Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America by Kurt Andersen, (Random House)
7. 2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolaño, (Picador)
8. Spaced Out: Crash Pads, Hippie Communes, Infinity Machines and OtherRadical Environments of the Psychedelic Sixties by Alastair Gordon, (Rizzoli)
9. America Swings by Richard Prince and Naomi Harris (Taschen)
10. World Unfurled by Matteo Pericoli (Chronicle Books)
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