My reviews of books in reverse chronological order (i.e. most-recent-first) of date-of-review (which is not necessarily the same as the date-read).
Title: What We Do Now
Editors: Dennis Loy Johnson, Valerie Merians
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 21 February 2005
What We Do Now is a compendium of pain; written as it was, shortly after the death of democracy at the hands of the RepubliNazi election-thievery on Nov.2 2005.
Editors Johnson and Merians asked for, and compiled a list of short essays from various progressive writers post-election, when the anguish was still deep and the senses were still in denial at the utter stupidity of some 60 million redneck morons.
The subject at hand was not so much a post-mortem of the Democrats' failed campaign to kick the war-criminal out of the White House and into a jail-cell at the World Criminal Court, but an attempt to provide, even in those dark hours, a vision for the future.
With the exception of a few writers (e.g. wankers like Kristof and Sunstein, who, inspite of all the atrocities that have been carried out in open-view for the last 4 years by the HitlerBush junta, advocate a policy of "reconciliation and compromise"), the essays are boldly militant in spirit and call for the right avenues for forcing change---ignore the corporate media, ignore the wimpy Democrats, work from the grassroots, never compromise, learn to fight dirty, and so on.
Steve Almond's acerbic prose, in particular, provides some balm for the pain and horror of the so-called election, and a good template for action for the future.
The goal: ensure that each and every MotherCheneying FatherCheneySucking RepubliNazi war-criminal scumbag is tried and convicted for their crimes against humanity, and made to pay the penalty.
Title: We The People
Author: Thom Hartmann
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 21 February 2005
One might walk past Thom Hartmann's We The People at a bookstore or library bookshelf without so much as a second glance, thinking it to be a comic book. That would be a serious mistake.
Just as Doonesbury is more reliable as a source of news that the editorial pages of the very same newspaper that publishes the cartoon will not touch for fear of "giving offense" and maintaing a pseudo-status of "non-partisanship and balance", Hartmann's cartoon book provides, simultaneously, a brilliant history of the US from the days of the Founding Fathers (not all of whom were stellar, freedom-loving, individuals) to the state of facism that we see around us today.
Hartmann carefully traces the increasing clout of corporations into almost all aspects of public life, while pointing out why such "privatization" and "profiteering" of the common good would have been anathema to the founders of the country, and will prove utterly detrimental to democracy (as a form of government answerable to the governed, rather than to shareholders).
The cartoon form also makes the book and its message immediately accessible to any sensible person willing to learn something about American history (i.e. it excludes multi-generationally inbred RepubliNazi rednecks obsessed with colin-bowell cheneying their daughters in the moral-value laden American heartland), and a spring-board to more weighty volumes on these subjects.
A worthwhile read.
Title: Don't Think of an Elephant!
Author: George Lakoff
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 29 January 2005
Lakoff's book Don't Think of an Elephant! is really about two different things: one descriptive and the other prescriptive. I find myself in leonine-roaring, table-thumping, rah-rah agreement with his descriptives, and just as vehemently and passionately in disagreement with his prescriptives.
Let us take the points one by one.
First the descriptive: To paraphrase Lakoff's argument, when faced with a fact (or even a whole slew of facts) that contradict one's internal mental frames used to model the world, it is the facts that get thrown out far more easily and often than the frames. Cognitive scientists probably even have good theories about why this might be the way the human mind has evolved---frames are expensive to build, and are used (and reused) to interpret and bring order to the vast complexity of the world. Facts, especially those not quite integrated into mental models, are easy to get rid of without affecting anything else. Frame removal is tantamount to large-scale structural collapse of the mental models of the mind---and a quite frightening and disorienting event. The supremacy of frames over facts is what Lakoff uses to explain how and why RepubliNazis seem to have completely taken over all public discourse. This is an important point to note: Lakoff does not credit media power except as a conduit for a deeper, and far more powerful and insidious rape of thought. Lakoff also does not give much credence to mere terminology: the Orwellian nomenclature of RepubliNazis and HitlerBush in insisting on calling things the very opposite of what they really are (Clear Skies Initiatives promoting pollution, No Child Left Behind deliberately engineered to hurt children, and Tax Relief intended to hurt the weakest in society and benefit the already well-off).
The misleading terminology and outright lying are just peripheral manifestations of the fact that over 40 years of incessant effort (via think-tanks and grassroots activism), RepubliNazis have created in us mental models that can be immediately triggered (and made to intercept any incoming information) by the employment of a few succinct words and phrases.
The mental model invokable by a single RepubliNazis word today takes pages and pages of patient explanation by liberals to counter. The very attempt seems a lost cause.
Lakoff's descriptive also elaborates on the 2 conflicting metaphors employed by RepubliNazis and by liberals/progressives: viz. the strict father model and the nurturant parent model of society. Even without going into detail about these models, it should be clear that RepubliNazis favor a strict father view of the world and believe (some deeply and others as a political expedient) that their policies are essential to promoting such a world view. This conviction makes their zeal all the more ferocious and virulent---and far greater than the original Nazi hatred towards Jews, gypsies, and gays.
So much for description. When Lakoff offers prescriptions on how liberals and progressives can counter RepubliNazis ideology, he, naturally enough, asks us to work on developing counter-frames which, over time, can replace the RepubliNazis frames currently in vogue and activated almost by default at the mere utterance of a key word or phrase.
This is where I disagree with Lakoff. My disagreement is twofold: first, I do not believe that liberals and progressives can afford to spend the time and effort developing frames when they (and the rest of the world) are being raped and tortured into oblivion by RepubliNazis convinced that they will be raptured into heaven in a few years time---after all, how does the existence of a new frame 40 years down the road matter when a nuclear holocaust will cook the planet 4 years from now because of the madness of HitlerBush.
The second, and deeper intellectual, disagreement I have with Lakoff's prescriptive is that it seems to me to repeat the same abomination as RepubliNazi tactics do. Employing a weakness of the irrational mind, even for a good cause, is deeply abhorrent to a lover of reason as I am. I would much rather see humanity suffer and die for their irrationality than play any part in subverting the unreason into progressive causes.
It is far better, far more noble, and utterly essential, (as far as I am concerned), to remain true to reason and die unhappy and miserable, than it is to attain happiness through any route, especially ones that abandon the one commendable thing about the human mind.
Still, that is just me. Lakoff's discussion of the strict-father/nurturant-parent models, and his case for thinking in, and about, frames are extremely useful tools when it comes to interpreting the mad and almost contradictory world around us. Don't Think of an Elephant! is worth reading for that alone.
Title: The Yes Men
Author: Andy Bilchbaum, Mike Bonanno, Bob Spunkmeyer
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 21 December 2004
Who would not be outraged at suggestions that:
When such outrageous statements were made, seemingly under the auspices (and by supposed public representatives) of the World Trade Organization, audiences merely cheered the manifest destiny of globalization and unfettered laissez-faire capitalism working its way to glory and immortality.
The Yes Men, a group comprised of Andy, Mike, Bob, and friends are pranksters with a deadly serious message: starting from those early days when they sabotaged Barbie and G.I.Joe dolls to switch their voice-chips to when they parodied the Thief-in-Chief (twice)'s campaign website to the period when they faked the real WTO's web site so effectively that they started to receive invitations to conferences to talk about WTO policies.
The book is a compilation of the WTO-period in the group's lives, and it is difficult to believe that no one in their audiences at these trade conferences caught on to the hoax or even bothered to question the completely outlandish proposals put forth by the Yes Men. OTOH, when "moral values" allow a smirking chimp to crap all over the world without regard for law or justice, the gaga acceptance of the "free trade at any cost" groupthink is perhaps not all that surprising.
More than the hilarity is the basic inspirational message of the book. Sometimes (and increasing so in this sad world of ours), guerilla parody is often the last and only resort for civil disobedience.
The book closes with "dismantling of the WTO" (yet another hoax swallowed by the media and numerous gullible trade groups), but let us keep in mind that the spirit lives on: in December 2004, Andy appeared on the BBC World Service news program as an official representative of Dow Chemical apologizing and accepting full corporate responsibility for the Bhopal chemical leakage tragedy on the anniversary of the event. Needless to say, the Beebs shamefacedly issued a retraction, and Dow went on to apologize for the incompetence of the BBC and the misunderstandings that might have resulted in its audiences, but not, however, to the people of Bhopal.
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Title: Sock
Author: Penn Jillette
Category: Fiction
Review written: 28 August 2004
Penn Jillette (yes, of "Penn and Teller" fame) demonstrates that his remarkable talents include penmanship as well.
Sock is the story about religious fanaticism, although cleverly disguised under many layers of plot and style as a murder-mystery. The title comes from the narrator of the story---a sock monkey whose owner is a police officer who is investigating what started out as the brutal murder of one of his former girlfriends but ends up as a serial killing with strange characteristics.
As the story progresses, we hear from Sock the various backstories about the police officer (variously known as "Little Fool" or "Cotton Balls"), the murdered former girlfriend, and commonality between all of the victims---namely, that they were lonely atheists.
As Little Fool's calm exterior unravels, the plot picks up in speed and frenzy until we reach the "shootout at the NY carnival corral" conclusion where the killer is revealed (to be a whacko, a theologically sophisticated whacko, but a whacko nonetheless).
A very entertaining, fast-paced, stylish, and thoroughly enjoyable book.
Title: Fanatics & Fools
Author: Arianna Huffington
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 26 June 2004
Arianna does it again. Her latest book, Fanatics & Fools takes to task both the fanatics (i.e. Republican Mofo Nazis who brazenly lie, cheat, loot, and rape the country with no regard for anyone except the billionaire campaign donors) and the fools (the spineless Democrats who have given up all pretence of standing for any principles whatsoever and are content with desperately positioning themselves in that elusive "middle").
In addition to the sharp, salsa-spicy criticism, Huffington also offers readers a vision of what she sees American society should strive for, and its leaders should promise and fight for---a world where justice and compassion for the least privileged (and not the size of ice-scultures at corporate CEO shindigs) is the yardstick by which progress is measured.
Simultaneously funny and thought-provoking, and a great read.
Title: Against All Enemies
Author: Richard A. Clarke
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 14 April 2004
There has been much buzz about Richard Clarke's supposed withering indictment of the mendacity of the Bush Mofos pre- and post- September 11, their Iraqi agenda, and the incessant stream of outright lies that have been used to justify their actions---including their canard to every known problem: massive permanent tax cuts for the super-rich.
After reading this book, I am puzzled as to the hulabaloo. Clarke is probably one of the most hawkish people I have ever read; someone who has no qualms whatsoever about bombing "targets" in other countries, never mind the "collateral damage" or the fact that it would treat citizens of other nationalities as nothing more than cannon fodder.
Added to that is the fact that except for the first few and last few pages, the book is really about America's pompously self-titled "war on terror" since the 1980s through the 2000s, all told through Clarke personal experiences as the head of the National Security Council (his exact title and the names of the organizations he has headed have all mutated over time).
What is surprising, then, is the blind viciousness of the vituperative launched against Clarke by Republican maddogs (which, in the case of Republicans, is all of them) which just goes to show that when it comes to bottom-feeding scum-suckers, there is no besting Republicans.
And for those who are wondering, yes, the book does amply demonstrate explicitly (what should have been obvious to anyone with an above-room-temperature brain) that Bush is an evil, lying, moron surrounded by several evil, lying, ruthless, non-morons (I would not deign to call them "intelligent" since I am reluctant to insult intelligence or intelligent people).
Read the book if you are interested in the the minutiae of the workings of the federal civil service, and inter-agency infighting among the CIA, FBI, and various military groups that battle for turf in Washington. Otherwise, read the first and last 20 pages of the book and skip the rest.
Title: The Price of Loyalty
Author: Ron Suskind
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 13 February 2004
Ron Suskind's widely talked about book on the stupidity of the Motherfucking Motherfucker Moron, the single-minded ruthlessness of his coterie, and the backstory to the tax-cut frenzy of Republicans is a disappointing book, for three reasons:
The book is a fast read and may be tolerable in that sense.
Title: Boob Jubilee
Author: Thomas Frank, Dave Mulcahey
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 20 January 2004
Boob Jubilee is a collection of articles and essays published in the Roaring Nineties in The Baffler magazine---a publication devoted to richly analytical satire, and literate (though not overly lieterary) criticism of modern culture.
This book excerpts those pieces from the magazine that have something to say about the zeitgeist of the dot.com boom economy, back in the days before it turned dot.bomb.
In addition to the expected articles on the "market", Wall Street, and its whores---financial publications, we also get to see intelligent, witty, and slyly funny essays on urban yuppification, the ruthless promotion of marketing (especially in exhorting people to consume commoditized luxury goods in the pursuit of rugged individualism), the absence of any backbone in the mainstream media (especially in its silent and tacit approval of ridiculous right-wing claims of liberal bias), matched only by the venom and bile spewing from the vast and undisputably real right-wing conspiracy.
A great collection of superbly written observations that look back at that mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world of (promises) of instant wealth.
Title: How Would You Move Mount Fuji?
Author: William Poundstone
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 7 December 2003
The question in the title of the book How Would You Move Mount Fuji? is supposedly one of the many puzzle questions that is asked of prospective candidates at Microsoft, and an exemplar of similar questions being posed to interview candidates at not just other software companies, but also at investment banks in Wall Streets, and one assumes, even janitorial services temp agencies.
William Poundstone, the no-nonsense, informative, and extremely entertaining writer of various books, looks at these kinds of puzzle questions from the perspective of both the candidates and the employers---and offers advice for both camps on what use to make (and, equally importantly, what use to not make) of the entire process.
Poundstone uses interviews, questionnaire compilations, and anecdotes from various sources, and provides readers will a large list of common questions (and their answers as well).
A very enjoyable book, even for those who never intend on seeking employment at Microsoft (as I said above, these kinds of interviews are becoming so common that it will not a surprise if the next place you interview asks you to solve the puzzle of "8 balls, of which one is heavier than the rest, and you need to find the heavy one with the smallest number of weighings on a beam balance").
Even Car Talk has become a source of these puzzles, and in what may be recursive incestuousness gone awry, a listener reported that on his job interview, he used the answers from a radio puzzler to impress his would-be employers to land a plum job. An irony!
Title: It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Author: Paul Begala
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 2 November 2003
The stupid referred to in the title (a play on James Carville's phrase from 1992) of Begala's follow-up to Is Our Children Learning? is, of course, the moron who is presently raping the country.
Begala's book is best read starting at the final chapter (where he lays out a proposal for what Democrats ought to do to combat the MofoMoron) and then reading each of the chapters in sequence to find out the depth and breath of the rot and corruption that is the hallmark of Republicans.
One never expects Republicans (the late 20th century kind) to ever show any sense of decency or fairness, but the level of arrogance displayed in these times is almost unbelievable---so much so that it seems to have paralyzed the already spineless Democrats into rubberstamping any shit that comes past them.
It is time to takes off the gloves and start playing nasty. Read Begala's chroniciling of the traitorous deeds of this administration and get cracking. We do not need stupids in office.
Title: Dude, Where's My Country?
Author: Michael Moore
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 4 October 2003
Michael Moore is a national treasure.
It does not matter that he sometimes seems to go out of his way to invite comment, and is more of an entertainer and rabble-rouser than a strict stick-to-the-facts documentarian.
Sticking just to facts and playing nice are appropriate for a time and place where one's opponents also agree to play by standards of decency and fairness. When dealing with Republicans, the lowest motherfucking motherfucker scum-life on earth (who rank below mass murderers, child molestors, and even Catholic priests in depravity), it takes someone with the courage of Moore to speak out when everyone else seems to have been cowed down by rah-rahing calls to pseudo-patriotism and nationalistic jingoism.
With painstaking detail and simultaneous gut-cramping hilarity, Moore documents the actions of the Thief-in-Chief that by any standards of modern democratic society would be classified as high treason.
It has been said, and rightly so, that democracy is the system that gives people the government they deserve: election-stealing aside, if the country continues to vote for Republicans anymore, then it deserves to be screwed up the wazoo as it most certainly will be.
Title: Lies and The Lying Liars Who Tell Them
Author: Al Franken
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 4 October 2003
Al Franken is much too polite and gentlemanly.
He should have titled the book Motherfucking Motherfuckers and the Motherfucking they Deserve.
All Republicans are Motherfucking Motherfuckers, and they deserve the worst possible punishment for their lies, atrocities, treason, and traitorous actions as they have raped the country since taking over power illegally in 2000.
Franken, gentleman that he is, displays a level of patience and calmness that amazes one. He merely documents in great detail the lies, atrocities, treason, and traitorous actions of the biggest Motherfucking Motherfuckers starting with the Moron himself.
What is particularly funny (and in a sense also painful) is the ease with which the lies of the Motherfucking Motherfuckers can be exposed for what they are. And thus the horror of the situation that the mainstream (so-called "liberal") media has not had the cojones to do even the slightest bit of due diligence. In so succumbing to the bullying of the Motherfucking Motherfuckers, they have also become lying, treasonous traitors.
Needless to say Motherfucking Motherfuckers are not going to read this book or learn from it. The only hope is that the sane, right thinking people of this country wake up and make sure that the treasonous traitors are brought to justice before they rape this country into the ground.
A much needed book.
Title: A Mathematicians Plays the Stock Market
Author: John Allen Paulos
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 27 September 2003
John Allen Paulos does it again. Here at last is a superb book on the beast that is the stock market seen through the eyes of a mathematician.
Paulos begins, evolves, and ends the book with "personal" anecdotes about his ill-fated love-affair with WorldComm stocks (although one suspects that there is much literary embellishment to this parable).
However, the story of WorldComm serves as a springboard to explain and analyze the standard topics of finance and investment: efficient markets, technical analysis, fundamental analysis, index funds, diversification, options, and investor psychology.
And since this is written by a mathematician, we get a perspective that often seen in books on finance written by economists or investment professionals.
Consider for example, Paulos's stories about common knowledge and mutual knowledge and how the distinction between the two is adequate (at least a priori) as an explanation for the supposedly "unexplained" sudden movements in stock prices. As a non-linear, self-referential, information processing system, the stock market is far more complex than daily-morning talking heads seem to want to pretend it is.
Consider yet again, Paulos's contention that the behavior of the stock market may be at the boundary of comprehensible complexity, and how this can bring forth many paradoxical phenomena: technical trading rules that may work but no one can explain why they do, efficient markets exist only when most people do not believe in them (and vice-versa), and how lack of "information" is also information.
A must-read from one of the best mathematical writers of our time.
Title: The Da Vinci Code
Author: Dan Brown
Category: Fiction
Review written: 24 July 2003
The quest for the Holy Grail, Catholic conspiracy, secret societies, codes and cryptograhy, murder and mayhem, a chase across international borders, climax and resolution and, yet, the beginnings of a new adventure.
If literary historians and fiction readers are looking for a worthy successor to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, they could do worse than to pick Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code.
While it would be cruel and unusual punishment to reveal any more details about the story and thus spoil the juicy delights awaiting the virgin reader, suffice it to say that the novel richly deserves the appellation of page turner.
Regardless of the specific historical and religious plot points in the book, one must admit that Brown has provided us with a great, entertaining read, while simultaneously proving that just because you write in vernacular English (rather than semi-literary Italian) does not mean that you do not deserve to sit with the semiotist master.
Superb!!
Title: The Bobby Gold Stories
Author: Anthony Bourdain
Category: Fiction
Review written: 20 June 2003
Bobby Gold wears black. Different kinds of black, but black nonetheless. Bobby Gold is the strongman for the mob in New York, spending his days beating up people who are late with protection payments, and relaxing at nights bouncing rowdy patrons in the restaurants and bars owned by his boss.
In his return to fiction after forays into culinary gozo-documentaries, chef Anthony Bourdain delights our literary palette with hors d'oeuvres of short-short stories about Bobby Gold---starting from the time young Bobby gets busted by the cops and sent to prison, all the way to the time when the older, wiser, and infitely sadder Bobby has killed his enemies, lost his girlfriend, and is now a reclusive exile living in Southeast Asia.
Bourdain's knack for pacy, racy, writing is as evident in his fiction as it is in his non-fiction. A super-fast and thoroughly enjoyable read.
Title: Fair not Flat
Author: Edward J. Mccaffery
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 17 May 2003
Proposals for tax reform are about as numerous and complex as proposals for taxes themselves. It is also quite difficult to evaluate tax proposals without understanding in detail the political motivations of the person proposing them.
Edward McCaffery's book Fair not Flat is, as the name suggests, a progressive, hence fair-not-flat, but, most importantly, consumption-based tax system.
As with any first-principles tax system, the fair-not-flat proposal seeks to achieve the holy grail: a system that is (1) efficient (i.e. does not drastically distort incentives and cause people to expend more resources avoiding tax than in productive economic activity), (2) simple and easily enforceable, and (3) fair and broad, thus leaving aside more contentious issues about the size of taxation.
McCaffery's proposal is a consumption based tax. Income (which includes wages, and significantly, debt) is not taxed at the time of accquisition. Savings (into well-specified "trust accounts") are not taxed, neither are dividends or gains earned from these savings. Consumption on anything except basic necessities are taxed: either via tax forms that compute:
Consumption = Income - Savings
or via a national sales-tax or value-added tax combined with a rebate (to allow basic expenditure to go tax free).
The first half of the book is a discussion of why the current income-based tax system in the US is poorly implemented and unfair, and the next half discusses various consumption oriented tax schemes.
While the concept of a consumption based tax is good (and does not punish the frugal, but only the profligate), McCaffery sullies his proposals with various exemptions for medical expenses, education, housing and mortage. Once this happens, we would no longer have a uniform and fair consumption tax, but would have opened up the gates to continued political manipulation of categorizing various kinds of expenditure as "essential" or "non-essential". A few decades of such lobby-directed categorization, and we will have a tax system that is "consumption" in name only, and about as complex and unfair as the one we have today.
In any case, even if the kinds of drastic tax reform proposed in this book are no more than a pipe-dream, Fair not Flat is worth reading for anyone interested in tax-reform.
Title: Jennifer Government
Author: Max Barry
Category: Fiction
Review written: 10 May 2003
The corporations have finally taken over the world. Everyone's last name is that of the company they work for. Even governments operate on a for-profit basis.
This is the slyly subversively darkly humorous setting for Max Barry's novel Jennifer Government. Jennifer, as her last name suggests, works for the government, and is out to investigate a possible series of murders and assassinations staged by Nike to sell its new line of shoes (as in "shoes worth killing for"). She soon finds herself deep in a plot filled with bungling nincompoops, ruthless corporate operators, old friends and older enemies, and NRA killer squads.
Max Barry, being Australian, leaves no sacred calf ungored in his superbly paced, extremely funny, and entirely unapologetic critique of hyper-libertarianism: namely, that an unregulated "free-market" with corporations fighting for what is most profitable would also bring about the best state of affairs for everyone.
A wonderful read.
Title: What Liberal Media?
Author: Eric Alterman
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 10 May 2003
Media historian and journalist Eric Alterman takes on that perennial canard: the "liberal" media and its "liberal" agenda.
The myth of the "liberal" media has been repeated so often and so forcefully, that is seems almost ridiculous for someone to not just question this statement, but to actually argue that the opposite is in fact true---that the media is decidedly more forgiving of conservatives.
Alterman discusses not just extensive examples of conservative bias and liberal hatred in contemporary news coverage in print, radio, and TV, but also goes on to argue why the media is unlikely to be very liberal, to wit, it has to answer to those who fund its operations: media moguls and advertisers, who tend to be conservative.
Even better, Alterman attempts to put in context why people have come to accept the perception that the media is liberal. Prime among these reasons is the fact that the tide of political debate in the US has steadily shifted rightward ever since the 60s. The media themselves are so reflexively scared of liberal-bias accusation that they go out of their way to pander to conservatives (by both being lenient towards the right and being extra critical of the left).
A smart, readable, and timely book.
Title: Straight Talk on Investing
Author: Jack Brennan, Marta McCave
Category: Non-fiction
Review written: 3 April 2003
Simplicity is the most complex thing to understand and appreciate. Never more so than in the world of investing.
John Brennan, Vanguard's chairman, has written a good, readable, sober book on investing. The intended audience is both the novice and the supposed "expert" investor, and each of them has much to learn from it.
Nothing in the book is particularly new or revolutionary. The advice in it is common-sense, and even surprisingly unrelated to the world of Wall Street (as when Brennan says that the most successful investment strategy is to live below your means). However, this is precisely why such books are valuable---the human psychology is so ingrained towards accepting ever increasing amounts of complexity in anything presented to it that it needs periodic doses of the virtues of simplicity to avoid getting side-tracked and ending up in trouble.
If you know of someone in their teen years, give them this book. It may be the best reading recommendation in their lives.
[ Book Reviews | Reviews | Krishna Kunchithapadam ]
Last updated: Sat Mar 26 18:58:42 PST 2005
URL: http://www.geocities.com/krishna_kunchith/reviews/books/books-05.html