New York Times blogger Nate Silver has a book on forecasting riding high in the Amazon US charts at the moment. The Signal and the Noise is a survey of forecasting, and looks to be thoroughly entertaining. I've asked the publisher for a review copy.
Unfortunately, Silver has stumbled into the murky world of climate prediction, and has incurred the wrath of Michael E Mann, who has printed a lengthy critique at Think Progress. It's a lot milder than your normal Mannian critique, but includes many of the normal tactics. His invoking Silver's training at the University of Chicago as a cause for concern almost defies belief:
Nate Silver was trained in the Chicago school of Economics, famously characterized by its philosophy of free market fundamentalism. In addition to courses from Milton Friedman, Nate might very well have taken a course from University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt, known largely for his provocative 2005 book Freakonomics and its even more audacious 2009 sequel Super Freakonomics.
Silver sounds deeply frustrated, saying that Mann's piece is not a fair critique of what he wrote. I guess he should have read The Hockey Stick Illusion before deciding that Mann was the go-to guy.
The Signal and the Noise can be bought at Amazon US. It will be published in the UK in a couple of days, but they are letting you preorder the Kindle version.