Art McGee's Book

I can answer the "what happened to Art McGee" part... I believe he 'retired' from the game a few years ago and went back to his day job. In fact, I believe his day job is fairly prominent, and that "Art McGee" is a pen name.

In fact, my personal theory is that Art McGee is Alan Greenspan. :-) (Maybe now that Alan has some free time, he'll come back and update his book.)

Now I've never seen the book, so maybe I'm speaking out of turn. But by using the formulas from his book and plugging in the latest data every year for our "SGP" columns, aren't we in fact updating his work annually? My (limited) understanding is that the main contribution of the book is the development of the SGP formula, which we (and others) are now using openly.

So, again, I haven't read the book, but I'm not sure how much you're really missing out on by not having it. Doesn't mean I wouldn't like to read it, of course. :-)

Scott Monroe recently referred to Art McGee's book in his column. It is not uncommon for Mr. McGee and his book to be spoken about on this website. But frankly, making references to a book that is out of print and simply not available (even from rare and used book sellers - and I've tried) is not particularly useful. I actually find it a little aggrevating because every time I see that I want to look at the book but can't.

So my two questions:
1. What ever happened to Art McGee? Is he still around somewhere?

2. Can't someone buy rights to his book and publish it as a Acrobat file on the website? If the publisher is not interested in publishing it then how expensive could it be to do so?

If the book is good enough to be talked about so much - and it seems it is - then someone should find a way to make it available. Otherwise we should refer to sources that ARE available (or write a new one if none exist).

Just my opinions. I welcome others opinions as well.

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