ByROBERT J. HUGHES
Summer is nearly here.For a previous installment of our staff book picks, click here
Here's our latest crop of staff picks
:
Author: Martin Lindstrom
Reviewed by: Neil Parmar, Staff Writer, SmartMoney
Brand consultant
makes a big fuss about how his book is based on the "largest, most revolutionary neuromarketing experiment in history." Cost to conduct: Roughly $7 million. Time to complete: Nearly three years. Insights about what our brains do when we see company logos? Priceless. Lindstrom tests common advertising assumptions and shares observations using results from fMRI and SST brain scans. He shows how cigarette warning labels and graphic antismoking ads actually ignite the craving spot in a smoker's mind, and how images of brands like Apple and Harley-Davidson register the same brain activity as when people view religious icons and figures. This must-read for any marketer is also a helpful, albeit sometimes alarming, guide for consumers. That is, once you decide to start shopping again.
Truth and Lies About Why We Buy
Martin Lindstrom
Author: Iain Pears
Reviewed by: Robert J. Hughes
Iain Pears tells multiperspective historical tales (such as in his best-selling "An Instance of the Fingerpost") that provide you with a lot of conflicting information that you sift through to arrive at the truth. It's a tested approach. (The great Victorian novelist Wilkie Collins used it often, as in "The Moonstone.") It also has the effect of letting readers feel they're eavesdropping on history. Or at the very least, taking part in a ripping adventure. Here, Pears tackles arms sales, newspapers and commerce in the 19th century, though the novel begins in 1953, then jumps back to London in 1909, Paris in 1890 and Vienna in 1867, all to uncover the story of a fictional financier, John Stone, who was able to manipulate the world's markets. The skullduggery includes murder, espionage, two-faced journalists, naked civil servants and geopolitics. The story holds your interest (even if it's a trifle long at close to 600 pages) while giving a vivid perspective on the birth of modern cutthroat capitalism.
Author: Woody Tasch
Reviewed by: Thomas E. Weber, Editor, SmartMoney.com
The premise of "Slow Money" is intriguing: Can a new, enlightened approach to investing address the damage caused by unbridled capitalism's obsession with short-term results? "Slow Money" takes its cue from the movement known as Slow Food, which for years has been advocating local food and sustainable farming. Author Tasch, a veteran of socially responsible
, makes an impassioned case that the finance world's hyper-impatience has bad consequences for the environment and society. Post-meltdown, some of that will surely resonate with ordinary investors. But Tasch's warnings feel mostly like preaching to the Slow Food choir; mostly lacking are the concrete specifics of a new approach that could capture the attention of mainstream investors. His vision of patient investing ultimately feels more like philanthropy than capitalism which may nonetheless hold appeal for some in these turbulent times.
Investing as If Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered
investing circles
Author: Justin Fox
Reviewed by: Robert J. Hughes
The operative word in the subtitle of this book is "delusion." We are constantly surprised that people who make a lot of money aren't geniuses. We think they're smarter than they are. So do they. The reality is: They're bold, they're reckless, they're lucky. And often, they're idiots. Fox, a columnist at Time and a
goes back to the early days of the last century to get at our crazy market system. He also takes us through the academia-driven efficient-market hypothesis (that markets are rational) which, despite being unsupported by facts, has had an enormous impact on markets for almost half a century. What makes Fox's book so rewarding and so readable is his way with the telling anecdote: Example: a blistering takedown of the industry that Lawrence Summers gave way back in 1984, concerning "ketchup economists." Fox demonstrates clearly not only the illusory nature of monetary success, but also the illusion of superiority that wealth brings.
A History of Risk, Reward and Delusion on Wall Street
blogger
Author: Michael Connelly
Reviewed by: Brad Reagan, Staff Writer, SmartMoney
A classic page-turner, Michael Connelly's latest thriller doubles as an elegy for the old-school newsman.
, who got his start on the crime beat at several newspapers, opens the story with veteran cops reporter Jack McEvoy getting laid off from the Los Angeles Times. His replacement, of course, is much cheaper but also much greener. For his final story, McEvoy ends up chasing a sexually deviant serial killer responsible for the torture and murder of young women. The villain, the Scarecrow from the title, is also a computer genius and the way he is able to digitally manipulate his victims and eventually McEvoy adds a frightening level of realism. The story will remind many readers of "The Poet," Connelly's 1996 novel that also featured McEvoy on the trail of a serial killer. This one feels more current and more than a little wistful, as Connelly mourns a world that no longer values men like McEvoy.
Author: Randy Charles Epping
Reviewed by: Janet Paskin, Staff Writer, SmartMoney
Before Martians visit Earth, they would be wise to pick up Randy Epping's new basic guide to the global economy. With a blend of short essays (he has his own
) and expanded definitions, Epping strips economic concepts to their bare fundamentals. For further accessibility, metaphors are liberally applied: Money supply? Think of a Monopoly game. Real interest rates? Summon Alice in Wonderland. Unfortunately, he's light on insight: There's a clear explanation of the difference between gross national product and gross domestic product, for example, but no indication of why one measure is used versus the other, and what that might actually mean. Even in the chapter that asks: "What is the best economic system for the 21st-century economy?" Epping concludes that most successful economies use a mix of models, and "in the end, it's up to the people to decide." Not exactly groundbreaking. On the other hand, it'd make a lovely welcome gift for those Martians.
Author: Neil Oliver
Reviewed by: Robert J. Hughes
Old-fashioned true stories of derring-do for modern boys (and their fathers). The author is an archaeologist and
who, drawing from ancient and recent history, has dug up tales of men who did brave and sometimes foolhardy, necessary and sometimes unnecessary things. It's the kind of book that fathers might want to read aloud at bedtime to their sons (or daughters), especially since each individual tale can be spoken over the course of a couple of nights. Here you'll find the story of John Paul Jones and the beginnings of the U.S. Navy, Sir Ernest Shackleton's expedition across Antarctica, the heroism and desperation of the astronauts of the Apollo 13 moon mission, what really happened at the battle of the Alamo and the bravery of the forces at Normandy in World War II. Luckily, the stories are free of moralizing. Oliver writes well and concisely and these tales, sometimes tragic, are all the more potent and inspirational because his prose is unadorned. This book shows boys how worthy, and how difficult, it is to become a man.
Author: Keith Ferrazzi
Reviewed by: Kelli B. Grant, Senior Consumer Reporter, SmartMoney.com
In a job market where success is as much about who you know as how well you do your job, Who's Got Your Back preaches the value of creating and nuturing strong relationships.
, CEO of strategic relationship consultancy Ferrazi Greenlight, encourages readers to abandon a go-it-alone mentality in the workplace in favor of a few lifeline relationships advisors with whom you can be candid and so begin to realize your full potential. While Ferrazzi's advice may not feel all that radical beneath the prose, it will still provide plenty of ideas for anyone feeling their career needs a jumpstart.
Author: Michael Lewis
Reviewed by: Thomas E. Weber, Editor, SmartMoney.com
For Father's Day gift shoppers, "Home Game" will probably sound like a no-brainer. Michael Lewis, gifted chronicler of Wall Street ("Liar's Poker"), Silicon Valley ("The New New Thing") and our national pastime ("Moneyball"), weighs forth on fatherhood. But be aware: There is a demographic divide between dads who will "get" this book, based on Lewis's column for Slate, and those who won't. In relating experiences from the early years of his three kids with wife Tabitha Soren, Lewis candidly explains his perspective. With his cubicle-free writer's lifestyle and amid 21st-century expectations that dad play a bigger role in parenting, Lewis is experiencing the new fatherhood. The anecdotes and insights he relates are filtered through that perspective. For all that, it's good, easy-reading fun learning how fatherhood has changed Lewis (including, as he explains at one point, his attitude toward investing).
An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood
Author: P.J. O'Rourke
Reviewed by: Matthew Heimer, Deputy Editor, SmartMoney
Libertarian satirist P.J. O'Rourke has built a bestselling career by celebrating his own politically incorrect intemperance (his blog is
). So it's only fitting that he's devoted some of his best writing to that gaudy metaphor for excess, the gas-guzzling muscle car. In 18 essays that span three decades of car enthusiasm, O'Rourke pursues on- and off-road adventures in everything from a souped-up 1939 Chevy coupe to a stodgy new Ford Flex. He drives these cars (far too fast and often while drunk), wrecks them (see previous parenthetical), and fixes them (in one case, with clothespins) and never lets gear-head jargon get in the way of a good anecdote. The collapse of the auto industry makes the book poignantly timely. Unfortunately, the author's half-hearted attempts to blame Detroit's demise on Fun-Sucker liberal regulators provide the collection's only false notes. Even a humorist as gifted as O'Rourke can't make Al Gore funny; inserting a Gore joke every 25 pages seems, dare we say, excessive.
Author: Sarah Waters
Reviewed by: Robert J. Hughes
A rambling house that needs repairs. Creditors at the door. Finances failing. Sound familiar? History repeats. Let's go back to just after World War II, when the battles were won but England was reeling, with rationing, shortages of goods and an awakening sense that the old class-bound society was changing. People then were haunted by the past and in this novel they may be haunted by something much more sinister (no, not mortgage-backed securities). This evocative, poignant and even creepy novel is narrated by a doctor whose mother once worked as a maid for an aristocratic family whose fortunes have turned. Dr. Farraday gets caught up in the troubled lives of the eccentric Ayreses when he ministers to an ailing servant at their home and finds that something awful is going on there. Farraday suspects mental illness, but the servant girl and the reader know better. It's a ghost. And not a friendly one. Waters gives us vivid depictions of these troubled souls trapped in their pasts in an unfriendly present. It's a chilling tale for a warm season.
Author: John Sandford
Reviewed by: Janet Paskin, Staff Writer, SmartMoney
Brutus Cohn has a problem. Like many aging baby boomers, he's worried he hasn't saved enough money. And, considering he's spent more than two decades robbing banks and armored cars, he's got good reason to believe the benefits of Social Security will never reach him. So Cohn signs on for one last job, which takes him to the 2008 Republican national convention in Minneapolis, also the home of Lucas Davenport, the hot-headed clothes-horse detective star of Sandford's Prey series, which now runs
. Crimes proceed and Davenport pursues apace, but the best reason to read "Wicked Prey" (as opposed to, say, "Mortal Prey" or "Silent Prey" or "Chosen Prey") is the surprise of the subplot, in which the teenage girl Davenport is about to adopt discovers a meth-addicted, wheelchair-bound pimp with a mean streak aimed at the Davenports, and doles out some justice of her own.
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