Some people are hard to buy gifts for. With books, there is often a trade-off between books that say a lot, and those that people are willing to read. One book that I think hits the sweet spot is 100 Minds That Made The Market, by Ken Fisher.
Why do I think this? This book is 100 little books in one volume. You can pick this book up for five minutes, and read a well-written 3-4 page biography of person who has had a significant impact on how our markets work today. Then you can put it down, get back to work, and think that you have learned something significant.
When I read this book back in the late ’90s, I recognized about half of the people who were profiled in the book. I felt that I learned a lot in a short amount of time.
Consider the categories of people that the book deals with:
- The greats of the distant past (late 18th Century to mid 19th Century)
- Investment Writers and Data Publishers
- Famous investment bankers
- Bankers
- Central Bankers
- New Deal Regulators
- Swindlers, Scamps, Rogues, and Thieves
- Statisticians, Economists, and Nuts
- Successful Entrepreneurs and Speculators
- Unsuccessful Entrepreneurs and Speculators
- Notable Oddballs
- And more
The biographies are well-written and concise. They illustrate eras in Western, and in particular, American Capitalism. Many of the names are obscure in the present day, but after you read the biography, you have no doubt that they were important to their era.
I enjoyed the book greatly, and hope that you will too. If you want to buy it, you can get it here: 100 Minds That Made the Market (Fisher Investments Press)
Full Disclosure
I review books because I love reading books, and want to introduce others to the good books that I read, and steer them away from bad or marginal books. Those that want to support me can enter Amazon through my site and buy stuff there. Don’t buy what you don’t need for my sake. I am doing fine. But if you have a need, and Amazon meets that need, your costs are not increased if you enter Amazon through my site, and I get a commission. Win-win.
Happy Holidays David! Unless I missed it, I still haven’t seen that good advice that Ken Fisher gave you once way back when….this seems like the right forum.
It’s coming, but if you want it early, I wrote about it in my review of The Wall Street Waltz.
http://alephblog.com/2008/06/13/book-review-the-wall-street-waltz/
I forgot about that, until I did a little digging.
Hi David,
When you get a chance , would you please review Ashraf Laidi’s “currency Trading and Internarket Analysis.” Many thanks.