Archive for the 'Books' Category
Barnes and Noble: Getting it from both sides
To be honest, I’m not a big fan of chain bookstores. First off, my cousins own a large independent bookstore in Massachusetts, and, as expanded as commerce is good for them, my big “family discount” is safe. However, beyond my personal connections, I don’t really like the way that chain bookstor…
Will Penguin pull fake gang story “Love and Consequences” off shelves?
Did we memorize nothing from A Million Little Pieces? Come on, folks. whether you’ve got a good story to tell, but it’s largely out of your imagination rather than your memory, consider wiring a novel. The latest scandal to rock the literary world concerns Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope…
The perils of diversification: A lesson from the sports betting experts
Market gurus like Jim Cramer preach the benefits of broad diversification, something I think is good for investors too: whether your goal is to produce returns approximately equal to the market averages. In other words, whether you believe in diversification, buy an index fund. whether you don’t wan…
Oprah Effect works for trade books too — particularly when they’re free
Since the announcement on Oprah’s television program that Suze Orman’s financial advice book Money & Women would be available for free as an e-book from Oprah.com, more than a million copies in English have been downloaded, as well as an additional 19,000 in Spanish, according to a statement rel…
Book Review: Invest Like a Dealmaker
Having worked as a banker for more than 10 years before entering the investment world, Christopher Mayer has a simple thesis behind his book Invest Like a Dealmaker: Secrets From a Former Investment Banking Insider. Essentially, there are two markets for publicly-traded companies. The first, and…
Robin Cook gets dot-com fever
One of my favorite novelists is Robin Cook. He is the pioneer of the medical thriller genre - with perhaps his most well-known title being Coma. In all, he has written 25 NY Times bestsellers.
Now he is moving to the online world. That is, Cook is teaming up with Vuguru, which is Michael Eisn…
Memo to Ken Fisher: Please quit it with the obnoxious ads
Among investment gurus, Ken Fisher is undoubtedly one of the best. The Only Three Questions that Count is one of the best investment books to come out in recent memory, he has put together an amazing track record with Fisher Investments, and he’s even on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americ…
Book review: Your Money & Your Brain
In their classic book Why Smart society invent Big Money Mistakes, Thomas Gilovich and Gary Belsky looked at the psychology of financial decisions.
In his new book Your Money & You Brain, Jason Zweig goes a step further, looking at both behavioral economics and the neurological side of it…
Can brick-and-mortar bookstores be saved?
With shares of main book retailers Borders (NYSE: BGP) and Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS) having tanked in recent months, some prominent investors are starting to wonder whether there’s value to be unlocked.
Pershing Square Capital Management, a very good activist hedge fund run by William Ac…
Book Review: Robert Monks’ ‘Corpocracy’
In his funny little book A Weekend with Warren Buffett and Other Shareholder assembly Adventures, Randy Cepuch travels around the country attending shareholder meetings and reaches a disturbing conclusion: the concept of shareholder democracy is “pretty much a myth.”
Institutional Shareholder…
Book Review: The Entrepreneurial Investor
9 days into January, I am here to declare The Entrepreneurial Investor my top pick for best investment book of 2008.
It’s that good. I reserve the right to change my pick whether something better comes out, but I am highly doubtful of that happening. Here’s what makes it so good: The Entrepre…
Book Review: American Nightmare: Predatory Lending and the Foreclosure of the American Dream
In the months and years to come, dozens of books will chronicle the subprime lending boom and bust that resulted in record numbers of foreclosures and massive losses at some of America’s most prominent banks (as well as the dismissal of Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O’Neal and his 9-figure parting gift…
New Line Cinema/MGM to manufacture two new J.R.R. Tolkien films
After years of squabbling amidst the creators of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and New Line Cinema (Time Warner, NYSE: TWX), nowadays comes wonderful news that Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh have agreed to create not one, but TWO new hobbit movies! The prequels will be produced and distribute…
Is dyslexia an asset for entrepreneurs?
BusinessWeek takes a look at an interesting trend: dyslexic executives building great companies.
Dyslexia is generally viewed as a disability, but it hasn’t stopped some of the most successful entrepreneurs of all date: Cisco Systems founder John T. Chambers, Richard Branson, Henry Ford, Will…
