General Books

Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse (Lynn Sonberg Books)

Peter D. Schiff, John Downes

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 259 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The economic tipping point for the United States is no longer theoretical. It is a reality today. The country has gone from the world's largest creditor to its greatest debtor; the value of the dollar is sinking; domestic manufacturing is winding down - and these trends don't seem to be slowing. Peter Schiff casts a sharp, clear-sighted eye on these factors and explains what the possible effects may be and how investors can protect themselves. For more than a decade, Schiff has not only observed the U.S. economy, but also helped his clients reposition their portfolios to reflect his outlook. What he sees is a nation facing an economic storm brought on by growing federal, personal, and corporate debt, too-little savings, a declining dollar, and lack of domestic manufacturing.
Crash-Proof is an informed and informative warning of a looming period marked by sizeable tax hikes, loss of retirement benefits, double digit inflation, even - as happened recently in Argentina - the possible collapse of the middle class. However, Schiff does have a survival plan that can provide the protection that readers will need in the coming years.

Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life

John C. Bogle

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

For a critical element of American society, including many of its wealthiest and most powerful, there seems to be no limit today on what "enough" entails.

The excesses are most starkly visible in the continuing crisis in banking and investment, and even in the two enormous government-sponsored (but publicly owned) mortgage lenders, to say nothing of the billion-dollar-plus annual paychecks that top hedge-fund managers draw down and the excessive compensation paid to CEOs, regardless of  performance.

Throughout his legendary career, John Bogle—founder of the Vanguard mutual fund group, and creator of the first index mutual fund—has helped investors build wealth the right way and led a tireless campaign to restore common sense to the investment world. Along the way, he’s seen how destructive an obsession with financial success can be. Now, with Enough, he puts this dilemma in perspective.

Bogle offers his unparalleled insights on money, on the values we should emulate in our business and professional callings, and on what we should consider as the true treasures in our lives. By explaining what "enough" truly is, he demonstrates how close everyone can be to having it.

When Markets Collide: Investment Strategies for the Age of Global Economic Change

Mohamed El-Erian

Amazon Price: $18.45 List Price: $27.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: McGraw-Hill Amazon Marketplace: 64 new & used starting at $13.41

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Total reviews: 33 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"ONE OF THE SMARTEST INVESTORS ON THE PLANET."--MONEY MAGAZINE. .

�This book is an essential read for those who. wish to understand the modern world of investing.�.
�Alan Greenspan

. . .

Winner of the 2008 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award

When Markets Collide is a timely alert to the fundamental changes taking place in today's global economic and financial systems--and a call to action for investors who may fall victim to misinterpreting important signals. While some have tended to view asset class mispricings as mere �noise,� this compelling book shows why they are important signals of opportunities and risks that will shape the market for years to come. One of today's most respected names in finance, Mohamed El-Erian puts recent events in their proper context, giving you the tools that can help you interpret the markets, benefit from global economic change, and navigate the risks.

. .

The world economy is in the midst of a series of hand-offs. Global growth is now being heavily influenced by nations that previously had little or no systemic influence. Former debtor nations are building unforeseen wealth and, thus, enjoying unprecedented influence and facing unusual challenges. And new derivative products have changed the behavior of many market segments and players. Yet, despite all these changes, the system's infrastructure is yet to be upgraded to reflect the realities of today's and tomorrow's world. El-Erian investigates the underlying drivers of global change to shed light on how you should:

. .

. .
• Think about the new opportunities and risks.
• Construct an appropriately diversified and internationalized portfolio.
• Protect your portfolio against new sources of systemic risk.
• Best think about the impact of central banks and financial policies around the world

. .

Offering up predictions of future developments, El-Erian directs his focus to help you capitalize on the new financial landscape, while limiting exposure to new risk configurations.

. .

When Markets Collide is a unique collection of books for investors and policy makers around the world. In addition to providing a thorough analysis and clear perspective of recent events, it lays down a detailed map for navigating your way through an otherwise perplexing new economic landscape.

.

First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently

Curt Coffman

List Price: $20.00 By: Simon & Schuster Audio Amazon Marketplace: 20 new & used starting at $3.70

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Total reviews: 262 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In "First, Break All The Rules," Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman of the Gallup Organization present the remarkable findings of their massive in-depth study of great managers across a wide variety of situations. Some were in leadership positions. Others were front-line supervisors. Some were in Fortune 500 companies; others were key players in small, entrepreneurial companies. Whatever their situations, the managers who ultimately became the focus of Gallup's research were invariably those who excelled at turning each employee's talent into performance. In today's tight labor markets, companies compete to find and keep the best employees, using pay, benefits, promotions, and training. But these well-intentioned efforts often miss the mark. The front-line manager is the key to attracting and retaining talented employees. No matter how generous its pay or how renowned its training, the company that lacks great front-line managers will suffer. Buckingham and Coffman explain how the best managers select an employee for talent rather than for skills or experience; how they set expectations for him or her -- they define the right outcomes rather than the right steps; how they motivate people -- they build on each person's unique strengths rather than trying to fix his weaknesses; and, finally, how great managers develop people -- they find the right fit for each person, not the next rung on the ladder. This audiobook is the first to present this essential measuring stick and to prove the link between employee opinions and productivity, profit, customer satisfaction, and the rate of turnover. There are vital performance and career lessons here for managers at every level, and, bestof all, the audiobook shows you how to apply them to your own situation.

Getting to Yes : How to Negotiate Agreement Without Giving in (AUDIO CASSETTE)

Roger Fisher

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 152 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Getting To Yes - An Education In Negotiating Effectively 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

There are many books, articles and seminars on effective negotiation. "Getting To Yes" is an easy read that lends itself to practical application in any form of negotiation. For the price of this book there is no better value for learning effective negotiating skills.

Getting to yes 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Required reading in most negotiation classes I am told by my professor at UNH. I think it's an excellent book, we use two, this and "Bargaining for Advantage" by Richard Shell. I personally like the shell book better as it's more methodical which my brain processes more easily. Having said that, this book is also very good.

More pie 5 out of 5 stars.
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This book does a great job of helping the reader understand that rather than just focusing on getting the biggest piece of the pie, we should find ways to make the pie bigger.

Boring but Potentially Helpful Guide to Basic Negotiating 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you are uncomfortable with your current negotiation technique and strategy and seek to improve it, this book will offer you great help. It is comprehensive and easy to read with lots of great examples. On the other hand, if you are comfortable with your current negotiation ability this book will seem repetitive and obvious. The authors make it clear that career negotiators who have read the book agree that it teaches them what they already know, but the negotiators also admonish the authors for outlining clearly and in laymen's terms "The Method" as they refer to it, even as a refresher. Note that this is not a sales strategy book that will help you get your way by any means, it is a book advocating healthy, relationship friendly negotiation.

Editorial Review:

This internationally bestselling "bible for negotiators" tells listeners how to negotiate without giving in and without turning an honest disagreement into a test of wills.

Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises (Wiley Investment Classics)

Charles P. Kindleberger, Robert Aliber

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Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Relevant but hard to read 3 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I am no economist and just an interested general reader. I expected to read narratives about past financial crises and how they played out. But this book is not organized that way. It doesn't tell any story from start to finish. Instead it references lots of different crises in a kind of shorthand way, without giving the background or the overall narrative.

Many of the references are pretty darn obscure, at least to me. So fine, if he's talking about how a certain phenomenon works and he says, "as in 1932," or "as in the S&L crisis," I'm with him. But when he says, "just as in the 1762 case in Belgium" (made up example)--well, my eyes start to glaze over, because he hasn't told me the story of 1762 Belgium, but referenced it as if it should be as familiar to me as the Great Depression in the US.

I also think there's something wrong with the writing style. He seems not to start out with topic sentences that show us where he's going, or to end with a summing up of the significance of what he's just said. Certain details recur within a few pages of each other. The effect is pretty scatter-shot, as if it was not carefully edited and made to flow.

There is plenty of raw material here for anyone watching our current economic crisis and wondering how it happened, but you have to work for it. What I get from it is that in certain circumstances, if everyone does what seems best to him or her in the market, the end result will be disaster for all. It's not really irrational to buy when prices are increasing by the day, because huge profits can indeed be made. But the more people that make that individually rational choice, the more irrational the whole thing becomes.

Maybe I could compare it to a stampede to an exit door in a fire. Each person's individual best choice is to get out as quickly as possible. But if you allow that psychological reality to play out, you might have people trampled to death at the door who then block everyone else from escaping.

Reading this was like listening to a rather elderly professor of history who is intimately familiar with many obscure incidents, but doesn't provide the context for his young students to follow his train of thought.

Editorial Review:

Manias, Panics, and Crashes, Fifth Edition is an engaging and entertaining account of the way that mismanagement of money and credit has led to financial explosions over the centuries. Covering such topics as the history and anatomy of crises, speculative manias, and the lender of last resort, this book puts the turbulence of the financial world in perspective. The updated fifth edition expands upon each chapter, and includes two new chapters focusing on significant financial crises of the last fifteen years.

The Richest Man in Babylon

George S. Clason

Amazon Price: $11.20 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin Books USA, Inc. Amazon Marketplace: 120 new & used starting at $0.01

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 409 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Intense wisdom delivered in a concise 144 pages 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Intense wisdom delivered in a concise 144 pages. Confession: For many years, I've known of this book but was not bothered to read it since I thought, well, it might just be another how to make a million dollar book. Then after some thoughts I figured, well, there's not much harm picking it up and have a look, if I'm not convinced, I can always put it back, with little loss of time. But in retrospect, my such reaction was analogous to that of Bill Gates's attitude towards Warren Buffett prior to 1991 :P (I'm not comparing myself with them, just the situation!) In case you don't know, Bill Gates had thought of Warren Buffett another your-friend-recommendation-of-smartest-guy, until his mother says Kay Graham of Washington Post was there, he went along, and the rest was history.

Lest you think I wrote all those just to boost word count, just two short comments on 'intense wisdom' and 'concise 144 pages': 'Intense wisdom' because there's no word wasted in the book, so read with full attention (and respect accorded to a prayer, if you will), better in a quiet library than in noisy subway; 'concise 144 pages', more so considering the fact that the book is smaller than A5 size! If you can practice the advice expounded in the book with fanatic devotion (I guess nothing less is satisfactory), you're on your way!

Editorial Review:

This book holds the secrets to acquiring money, keeping money, and making money earn more money.

Jim Cramer's Real Money: Sane Investing in an Insane World

James J. Cramer

Amazon Price: $17.16 List Price: $26.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Simon & Schuster Amazon Marketplace: 133 new & used starting at $6.80

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Total reviews: 273 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

How do we find hot stocks without getting burned? How do we fatten our portfolios and stay financially healthy? Former hedge-fund manager and longtime Wall Street commentator Jim Cramer explains how to invest wisely in chaotic times, and he does so in plain English in a style that is as much fun as investing is -- or should be, when it's done right.

For starters, Cramer recommends devoting a portion of your assets to speculation. Everyone wants to find the big winners that can bring outsized gains, and Cramer explains how to allocate your portfolio so that you can afford to take this kind of risk wisely. He explains why "buy and hold" is a losing philosophy: For Cramer, it's "buy and homework." If you can't spend an hour a week researching each of your stocks, then you should hand off your portfolio to a mutual fund -- and Cramer identifies the very few mutual funds that he'd recommend.

Cramer reveals his Ten Commandments of Trading (Commandment #5: Tips are for waiters). He explains why he's not afraid to compare investing to gambling (and tells you which book on gambling you should read to become a better investor). He discloses his Twenty-Five Rules of Investing (Rule #4: Look for broken stocks, not broken companies).

Cramer shows how to compare stock prices in a way that you can understand, how to spot market tops and bottoms, how to know when to sell, how to rotate among cyclical stocks to catch the big moves, and much more. Jim Cramer's Real Money is filled with insider advice that really works, information that Cramer himself used to make millions during his fourteen-year career on Wall Street.

Written in Cramer's distinctive turbocharged style, this is every investor's guide to what you really must know to make big money in the stock market.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (A Marketplace Book)

Marketplace Books

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Total reviews: 202 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Critical Praise.. "In my interviews with over 30 of the best traders of our time, there were some questions that I raised in each conversation. One of these was: Are there any books that you found particularly valuable and would recommend to aspiring traders? By far, the most frequent response was Reminiscences of a Stock Operator-a book that was over 70 years old!" -from the Foreword by Jack Schwager Author of Market Wizards and The New Market Wizards "Although Reminiscences.was first published some 70 years ago, its take on crowd psychology and market timing is as timely as last summer's frenzy on the foreign exchange markets." -Worth magazine "The most entertaining book written on investing is Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, by Edwin Lefevre, first published in 1923." -The Seattle Times "The best book I've read is Reminiscences of a Stock Operator. I keep a supply for people who come to work for me." -Martin Zweig "After 20 years and many re-reads, Reminiscences is still one of my all-time favorites." -Kenneth L. Fisher Forbes First published in 1923, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is the fictionalized biography of Jesse Livermore, one of the greatest speculators ever. Reminiscences remains the most widely read, highly recommended investment book ever written. Generations of investors have found that it has more to teach them about themselves and other investors than years of experience in the market. This is a timeless tale that will enrich the lives-and portfolios-of today's investors as it has those of generations past.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing, Ninth Edition

Burton G. Malkiel

Amazon Price: $19.77 List Price: $29.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: W. W. Norton Amazon Marketplace: 64 new & used starting at $11.49

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The million-copy bestseller, revised and updated with new investment strategies for retirement and the most current research into behavioral finance.

Updated with a new chapter that draws on behavioral finance, the field that studies the psychology of investment decisions, here is the best-selling, authoritative, and gimmick-free guide to investing. Burton Malkiel evaluates the full range of investment opportunities, from stocks, bonds, and money markets to real estate investment trusts and insurance, home ownership, and tangible assets such as gold and collectibles. This edition includes new strategies for rearranging your portfolio for retirement, along with the book's classic life-cycle guide to investing, which matches the needs of investors in any age bracket. A Random Walk Down Wall Street long ago established itself as a must-read, the first book to purchase before starting a portfolio. So whether you want to brief yourself on the ways of the market before talking to a broker or follow Malkiel's easy steps to managing your own portfolio, this book remains the best investing guide money can buy.