3 comments about The 10 People Who Suck - A Positive Prescription for Improving Communication in the Workplace.

1. I really liked this book. It's light-hearted and short enough to make an easy read, but thoughtful about what makes a good strategy for dealing with difficult individuals (the titular "people who suck"). The descriptions of each type first made me laugh...and then made me cringe (I work with some of these people!). The framework presented for crafting those strategies is very useful, if a little rigid, and the authors' ideas for dealing and communicating with challenging people gave me a lot to think about. I'd definitely recommend this book, especially to anyone who finds themselves having a hard time with that know-it-all boss, tyrannical customer, or lazy colleague.



2. A very helpful book. It is so important to not only be reminded of who these people are; but also to learn what can be done to make things better. I thought the 10 People struck the right balance between humor and helpful insight.



3. Anyone who has worked with or managed these ten people can benefit from the strategies laid out in this book. The authors not only describe the warning signs but offer remedies that go beyond just griping about our problematic coworkers at happy hour. It is a fast, fun read that makes you think twice about your own office dynamics and hits so close to home sometimes you swear your office might be bugged. Unlike a lot of management books this one doesn't preach from on high but offers perspective from the trenches. It gives you hope you aren't alone in dealing with these personality types and makes you think twice about whether you might be one of them.

No comments about Macroeconomics: Principles And Applications.

5 comments about The Spirituality of Success: Getting Rich With Integrity.

1. To say that Spirituality of Success is chicken soup for the soul would be too cliche`, yet that's exactly what it is. If you're willing to be brutally honest with yourself, I'd recommend Roazzi's book because it can make an improvement in your life as it did in mine. All my friends to whom I've recommended it have thanked me. One of the encouraging things I learned from reading this book is that if you're one of those people who have always felt like the "odd man/woman out", take heart. We're the ones who are right! The rest of the world is screwed up.



2. I'm very selective about what I read and not easily impressed. When I heard Vinny on NPR I knew I had to buy this book. I have recommended it numerous times already as one of the most important and helpful books I have ever read. This book shows how to be a successful person - not just businessman. It's principles are simple and timeless - and what is particularly great - really gleaned from what the author learned in recovery (a 12-step program). A reviewer said it was a good book, but without much practical help. That couldn't be further from the truth. This book was worth a $1000. seminar. It guided me and motivated me, and truly saved me when everything in my life was changing - including work. Thank you Vinny! You're da man!



3. For many years I have been studying and practising 'manifestation' and wondering why my results were so limited. I found the answer in this book, along with many other answers. This book differs from other books in the same genre in that it is absolutely clear and solid, marrying spiritual wisdom with practical insight. I can't recommend this book too highly, and will be applying its principles to my own life.



4. Covers many aspects of success. Lots of good thoughts in this book that you will find from other great authors on the topic of success.
   
   You will find the role of emotional intelligence in making decisions and why there needs to be both rational and emotional intelligence in order to be successful. Some tend to lean in either direction but it's hard to be balanced in both.
   
   There are several topics explored that could have used greater narration but the overall book is good.
   
   It leaves you to explore things like the scientific value of positive energy and it's role in succcess through quantum physics.



5. One year ago, in Feb 2006, I took a big step on my journey. Sometime before that, I had already begun to understand that in order for my life to change, it would have to begin with my taking responsibility... for EVERYTHING in my life.
   
   A few months earlier, I had lost what I loved most in this world - my parents. I was richer than royalty for having had them in my life. They taught me the true meaning of what it means to be loving and selfless. But, without them, I felt there was nothing left for me here in NYC. I was ready to move away... but it didn't feel right yet.
   
   I responded to an employment ad in the NY Times; the word "Mentor" attracted me as few, if any employers, ever use that word. Within a few days, I was sitting across the table from two men who were interviewing me for a position - one of them was Vincent Roazzi.
   
   I'd go on for pages here if I told you everything I'd like to share with you about Vinny. From the moment I started reading his book that same day, I knew I wanted to spend as much time as possible with this person and learn from him. Sometimes, I'd linger at the office just to sit at a desk beside him, hoping that I'd get to chat with him on some evenings. Vinny answers you with questions; admittedly, a bit frustrating at times, but it leads you to the right answers for YOU.
   
   You'll never find any huge fanfare and blinking neon lights pointing Vinny out from a crowd. He doesn't do much (anything?) at all to promote his book. Yet he knows very well some of the greats such as Bob Proctor and Joe Vitale. And I'm sure they are not surprised to see the word "Integrity" in the title of his book.
   
   Read his book...you'll be glad you did. And while you're reading it, remember this: He didn't become rich telling people how to do what he has never done, which seems to be an easy way to fame and fortune for a lot of people. Vinny scraped bottom at a time when he had a wife and five children to support at home. He learned a formula for success, and has been teaching others that same formula for over 15 years. But you will also learn from his book that although people want change... ironically, they don't want to change.
   
   If YOU are at the lowest point of your life, or ready to make things HAPPEN rather than feeling like you're a victim of HAPPENSTANCE, Vinny's story will inspire you and, hopefully, move you to take action. Or if you're using a formula for success that just doesn't seem to be working, stop for a moment and learn Vinny's way... it's a little different from what you've probably learned in the last 5, 10, 20+ years.
   
   Thank you, Vinny, for your generosity in so many ways. May the Universe keep and bless you and your family for many years to come.
   
   ~Denise Michelle 02/04/07
   [...]

2 comments about Ripping the Roof Off Real Estate: How a Multi-Billion-Dollar Industry Came to Have an Identity Crisis.

1. As a licensed real estate broker, I found this book to be both informative and enlightening. We do have a crisis in this industry and the author's approach is very positive and refreshing. It has caused me to reconsider the way I serve my clients.



2. You may not want to hear it, but Mollie tells it like it is. No rose colored glasses or "pie in the sky"; just common sense with a dash of a pretty clear vision of the future of the real estate profession. She hits the nail on the head with her thoughts and opinions of what the future holds for real estate salespeople that don't keep up with what's happening in our business.
   
   I could go on.........just get the book. You won't be sorry. Welcome to the new mind set of real estate sales.

2 comments about Service Parts Handbook (2nd Edition).

1. My professional background is supply chain consulting, with significant project experience in service parts logistics, inventory management and operations planning and control.

   I was initially excited to purchase this book, because textbooks entirely dedicated to the topic of service parts are very rare and difficult to find. The book significantly disappointed me in several ways, however.

   First, the vast majority of the content seems to be comprised of the loose-knit and very informal beliefs and ramblings of the authors. I did not find any kind of unifying framework or suggested strategy(s) presented by the authors, which I beleive is a serious absence. Also, there are several examples in the book where I believe the authors simply just made a statement, without a lot of critical thought or supporting evidence, to put words down on paper.

   Second, the book is almost entirely dedicated to very technical, low-level topics (for example, part numbering), but the authors fail miserably at presenting the details in a scientific, formal and complete fashion. For example, I have a basic litmus test for inventory texts to gauge their completeness: I check the table of contents for a detailed discussion on segmentation. I am referring to robust, multi-criterion segmentation, where variables such as part criticality, usage variation, availability and dollar-volume are used in multiple ways to truly understand the supply and demand characteristics of a body of inventory. This book has no such discussion.

   Last, the book seems to me to be just poorly written and produced. Subtopics within chapters do not flow, paragraphs are often fragmented, and points are often made with the implied statement of, "just believe us [the authors] because of our extensive experience." Many leading edge topics on ideas such as supply chain collaboration, information sharing, outsourcing, advanced decision support and detailed statistical analysis, are not even covered. Also, many of the graphics and diagrams are of a very low quality.

   I do not recommend this book for any reader. My best suggestion would be to scour the Internet and other inventory texts if you have a critical need for content specific to service parts.




2. Comments on book:

   The Service Parts Handbook has been revised and expanded with the 2003 release of the second edition. The first edition was published in 1997. This second edition is authored by Joe Patton and Roy Steele.

   The initial release of the Handbook was a major step forward in documenting the principles and practices of service parts management. It was useful in the general area of after-sales service parts management of repairable equipment and products.

   This book can be used by managers as well as practitioners. The book is written at the practical level backed with theory as necessary. This book would be most useful for anyone involved in service parts management as a member of an original equipment manufacturer, as a member of a distributor, to those in the dealer network, third-party maintainers, or end users.

   There are almost 60 additional pages in this second edition compared to the initial release of the handbook (now a total of 541 pages). The book is illustrated with charts, graphs, and tables. The second edition makes a number of interesting changes. Three new chapters have been added that are timely: Outsourcing, Utilizing Technology Solutions and Logistics Business Modeling.

   Several chapters have been revised with the addition of new material: Procurement, Repairables, Quality, Service Parts Valuation and Integrating Parts in the Total Service Process. The other chapters have been revised where necessary.

   This is a worthwhile update with a number of new concepts presented. Highly recommended.

2 comments about Style Investing: Unique Insight Into Equity Management (Frontiers in Finance Series).

1. An insightful read. Perhaps more could have been made of the investment practicalities involved in when to actually make a transition from one style to another. It would also have been nice to have been given further details on style index constuction in order to aid the investment profesional. But overall, a seminal and defining book on style investment.



2. This is a very unique book. It covers topics
   which other books do not. Most other investing
   books look at stock picking, technical methods
   for market timing, or basic value vs. growth
   strategies.
   This book goes beyond these areas and suggests
   how and why value vs. growth cycles occur.
   It also touches on topics not discussed in
   other areas, like the earnings life cycle,
   equity duration, and the macroeconomic variables
   that influence the stock market. It also
   touches on how institutional investors behave
   and criticizes, justifiably, some of the
   decisions they make.
   I have read about 300 books on the markets,
   and this is quite unique. I thought I had
   read it all after over almost a decade as a
   full time trader.

5 comments about The Davis Dynasty: Fifty Years of Successful Investing on Wall Street.

1. I personally don't care for dry investment books. I read for entertainment. This book provides a great combination as it is a biography of a family steeped in money management and also gives tips of how they were able to grow their fortune.

   The book traces the investment history of Shelby Davis to his son to his grandsons. Shelby had family money through his wife and starts investing shortly after the crash in '29. Like many people, I assumed the market has been a somewhat continual climb with some setbacks. This books traces the history showing the many periods of lackluster stock value growth and how most Americans shunned the stock market for bonds. Quite a difference from today.

   The original Shelby was a miserly value investor who never spent an extra dime. His investment hits were insurance stocks when no one liked that industry and some prudent investments in Japan, also mainly in the insurance industry. By leaving these investments to compound for years, Shelby built a great fortune. But the hidden engine behind this vast growth was the use of margin to leverage his returns. The original Shelby eventually grew his fortune to over a billion dollars in value.

   Shelby's son Shelby did not work with his father until late in his life but eventually became a money manager of some renown also. His philosophy was similar but different and his large money winners tended to be from other industries. The book ends with the sons of Shelby Jr. taking over their father's money management firm and establishing their own identity.

   Along this 70 year history, you will learn about the markets and the different stages of development over the years. A significant amount of time is spent in the 60s and 70s as both of the Shelby's were investing at that time. I strongly recommend this book if you have interest in the market and its history.




2. This is one of the better investment books on the history of post-WWII stock investing. While there are a number of absolute classic books on the 1920s and earlier periods (Lefevre's "Remininscenses of a Stock Operator", Galbraith's "The Great Crash", Brooks's "Once in Golconda", to name just a few), there aren't as many great books on recent history. This is one of them, however.
   
   The Davis family, starting with Shelby Collum, is used by the author as a vehicle to traverse the history of the stock market from WWII through the late 1990s. Followers of mutual fund investing in the past 25-30 years are probably more familiar with Shelby Davis the younger, than with his father Shelby Collum. But it was the elder Shelby that made the family fortune. His is one of the great fortunes ever created strictly through long term investment and is a story of buying extreme value and holding for very long time periods. It's also about venturing into uncharted waters -- like being one of the first to invest in Japan.
   
   This theme is carried forward to the story of his son, the well-known former portfolio manager of New York Venture Fund. Shelby the younger came of age in the go-go sixties and picked up some bad habits. The savage bear markets that followed chastened him and forced him to revert to a style of investing closer to his father's in the mid 1970s. The tensions between them created a sort of competition with the son posting a tremendous record with his mutual fund vehicle, New York Venture.
   
   The relationship between father and son would be best described as "semi-estrangement." It took Shelby's sons, Andrew and, particularly, Chris to reconcile their father and grandfather's differences. The human story is interesting, and the elder Shelby was quite a character. I found the chapter on Chris's "apprenticeship" with his grandfather fascinating -- perhaps the best part of the book. In short, Shelby the elder is getting old and wants to retire and turn his portfolio over to a younger generation for management, but because of the bad feelings he doesn't know how to approach his son. And it's clear that he greatly admires the record his son has build with NY Venture. So he talks grandson Chris Davis (now the co-manager of NY Venture and Selected American Shares) into inventorying his portfolio. Chris then brings his father into the picture and the two of them work long hours reading through the 5 decades of trades and holdings. The portfolio at that time was close to $1 billion.
   
   The story ends with the younger Shelby's semi-retirement and turning the reins over to sons Andrew and Chris, and Ken Feinberg, who continue with this style of investing. The mutual funds and separate accounts run by the Davises typically have portfolio turnover rates less than 20%, often less than 5%. This means they buy and hold, and hold, and hold. However, it's the price they pay for stocks that really juices their returns. The pigeonhole mentality at mutual fund rating agencies like Morningstar don't adequately describe Davis funds because of this. The Davises buy deep value, but after a stock recovers from whatever temporary trauma caused the bargain price, they continue to hold as long as the company meets their growth expectations. So Morningstar, for example, will call them a "blend" fund, which seems to say absolutely nothing about such a distinctive methodology as the one the Davises follow. This book is an elucidation of the emotional discipline and intellectual process behind this style of investment. Both the book and the investment style are highly recommended by this reader.



3. This book is listed as Elementary Reading for the [...] Hidden Gems Newsletter. It provides great historical reading about the Davis family. Before the reading the book I had no idea who the Davis family was. I did not even realize we have the Davis Fund as a choice in our 401k at work. The fund has proven returns and been around for years. This was a great book to read for any beginning investor.



4. This was not a bad book, but I was hoping for more info on how the Davises evaluated stocks for purchase. There is a lot of background family drama in this work which didn't really interest me, but did illustrate what kind of personalities Davis and son had. For the most part, the elder Davis bought insurance stocks and held for the long term--the best way for all of us to invest(the long term, that is. I don't know much about insurance stocks). This book wouldn't be my first choice but anyone that turned 50 grand into 900 million without ever adding additional capital is worth a look.



5. This book is about The Davis strategy - the result of five decades of trial, error, and refinement, that worked its way through father, son and grandsons, and each generation tweaked it and tuned it to fit the era. The 10 basic tenets remain the same: avoid cheap stocks; avoid expensive stocks; buy moderately priced stocks in companies that grow moderately fast; wait until the price is right; don't fight progress; invest in a theme; let your winners ride; bet on superior management; ignore the rear-view mirror; stay the course.
   
   This book is both a biography and the analytical work devoted to the stock market. If you like such a blend, I would recommend the books by Roger Lowenstein: "Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist", "When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management" and "While America Aged: How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped the NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego, and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis". The books by Roger Lowenstein are much better than "The Davis Dynasty" in terms of the depths of the analysis, as well as when it comes to liveliness and variety.
   
   In addition to this book, I can also recommend my favorite title on investing "The Only Three Questions That Count: Investing by Knowing What Others Don't" by Kenneth L. Fisher.

1 comments about The Complete Idiot's Guide to Investing In Fixer-Uppers (The Complete Idiot's Guide).

1. This book achieves what it sets out to do: provide a simple introduction to the topic of real estate fixer-uppers and give the beginner a guidemap of a first deal.
   
   It walks the potential investor through the main steps, from finding and choosing a house, to inspecting it, to purchasing it, to doing the basic fixes, to putting it in the market for sale. Being a "Complete Idiots Guide", one knows what to expect, and this book does exactly what it sets out to do. It is particularly useful in giving small tips that would likely only be known by someone with much experience that has fallen into many traps.

No comments about Managing Americas Organizations.

4 comments about Pricing Derivative Securities.

1. If I could give this book negative stars, I would. I have taken Epps's class and have had to use this book extensively. Not only was it useless at teaching me, it actually confused me about the concepts....



2. As a biased reviewer (I helped proof the text), I will try to give comments as helpful as possible. First, from the standpoint of content alone, the text is ahead of most other general textbooks on derivative securities. There's hardly a topic in mathematical finance left untouched. About the only topic that is skimmed over is the PDE approach, but even there, Epps has a chapter on solving PDEs numerically (along with C++ and Fortran code in the appendix). There's also a limited amount on interest rate derivatives (one chapter).
   Epps provides more mathematical details than most texts. The background math is not relegated to a terse appendix, but is covered in detail in two large chapters at the beginning of the book. Two chapters in particular, "Models with Uncertain Volatility" and "Discontinuous Processes," have material that's hard to find in other books, and is presented very well. It's nice to see Ito's Lemma for Jump Diffusion processes explained, as well as an interesting section on pricing "inside" options (writing puts on a firm's own stock). Finally, there's a chapter on simulation and a huge amount of C++ and Fortran code, along with an exhaustive bibliography. I would recommend it without hesitation!



3. i learned rigorous finance for the first time via this book. and it has been my favorite enough to buy the book again as soon as i had lost it. mathematical introduction is the best part of this book.



4. This book has the best treatment of differences between the change of measure for a given numeraire vs the change from one numeraire to another stochastic (i.e. based on asset with stochastic variation) numeraire.