Insurance Books

Three years ago, when we first started shopping for a house in New Jersey, I couldn't find any reliable information on VA loans anywhere. This year, we resumed our search and I was delighted to come across David Reed's excellent Guide to VA Loans earlier this week as it clearly and concisely explains every step of the process of finding, qualifying for and closing a VA loan. The sample certification and loan applications, and helpful glossary of terminology are an added bonus, and I am much more confident about picking the right lender than I was before I bought this book. The VA should make sure every veteran picks up a copy!

This book was very helpful. there are over 22 million veterans and only about 2.5 million have VA home loans. I think that it is mostly becuase they don't understand how they can truly benefit from them. This book really helps you to understand the process of getting a va home loan especially when you are going to buy your first house which I think is big issue. I found it very helpful in taching me how to understand the streamline refinance process. if you are considering getting a VA home loan you MUST read this first! It will save you from many critical mistakes.

Chad Childress
Salt Lake City, Utah
http://www.vareficenter.com

Getting young people early on and actually learing about finances before it gets out of hand is a wonderful concept all parents need to have to instill in their/our children!
Suze Orman make thing so simple and easily understood.
Her approach should be taught in High School and beyond.

I love suze, but i didnt know this book was 2 inches big. It is a litlle tiny pocket sized book, for a person of very small pockets:) I didnt realize how miniature, minature edition was.

Having just gone thru a divorce, Suze Orman gives you the financial down-to-earth motivation you need to move on. Her heart-felt honest advice gives you that feeling that you CAN and WILL be able to handle your money no matter how it is affecting your life.

I found this small, hand held, version with nothing profound. Simple common sense

I wanted to like this, and there is some good 101 style advice in there about lump sum versus slower investing and trusts versus wills but this is basic info - the rest is baby boomer rubbish about "attracting money" with your beliefs, treating money as a "cherished friend" etc. She says it makes you "powerless" to help people out financially, that you should not help your kids pay bills, and that the only "powerful" way to give away money is to give it to your parents because you owe them for having you, and to give your money to a charity or church. So baby boomers if your gen x kids are swimming in debt from student loans hand more money to charities and places of worship and don't "lose power" by helping your kids. There is nothing in here for people under 40 and/or those struggling to start out in life under a mountain of student loan debt. Pass this one by.

I strongly recommend "Pat The Money" as the antidote to this book.

Now I know why I've stopped reading these books. I like it when people age, Anna Piegon has aged very gracefully from her 30's in Track of the Cat to 50 something in Winter Study. Even the wonderful Stephanie Plum is aging. If you enjoy reading that's stuck in a decade and the characters have discovered a "fountain of youth" this is the book for you, if you don't, like me, try something else.

This a a slow moving tome with little in the way of interesting crime or interesting characters. For me, Grafton has been uneven throughout her career, but these last two books represent a real drought for her.

What bothers me most about these last two books is her relentless product placement of a famous fast food restaurant. I suspect she makes more money from them than from book royalties.

i'm a Grafton fan been one since the mid 90's and have read and reread all the the Graftons some that i liked K is my favorite along with its next up to S. now i come to this review that i have been avoiding for a year, T is for Trespass now this one i didn't like as much, even the ones i disliked at first O being one of them i now love all of them in thier own way. this one that Rojas woman flat out creeped me out and frankly made me ill, and it affected my perception of the book to the point i really dont want to reread it. i was as always glad to get updates of Kinsey and her progress in life finding her family and checking into her neighborhood but the rest of it just left me feeling like i wasted my money. if i had to say why this book was a unsettling and disturbing read to the point of depressing. if that is what Sue was going for good for her. she made it that way in spades. little humor much depression and elder abuse YIK. me i'm sorry if i will wait a little longer to see how well U does and what its about.

There have been a few ups and downs in Sue Grafton's march to the end of the alphabet (I'd like to think that she, like J. K. Rowling, has already written the last chapter of the last book) but this is one of the high points. This time, Kinsey Millhone is involved in a tautly told story of elder abuse with a wily and dangerous nemesis. Solana Rojas is one of the most perfectly examined and fleshed-out of Grafton's long line of "bad guys" and she gave me the creeps long after this book was finished. It is always fun to keep company again with Kinsey and she really has become an old friend over these 20 (!) books. May the remaining books in the series be this well-plotted and interesting.

Sue Grafton is smart to add an interesting element in her ABC series, starting with *S is for Silence*. In *S*, Kinsey Millhone has been hired to investigate a 30-year old case of a disappearance. Deviating from the traditional formula from A to R, Grafton allows her readers to get to know Kinsey on a different level.

*T is for Trepass* is no exception. This time, Kinsey has met an adversary in terms of wits. In fact, her nemesis, Sonia Rojas, seems to be two steps ahead of her, which is infuriatingly (is that a word?) frustrating.

Kinsey's grouchy neighbor, Gus Vronsky, across the street, takes a nasty fall and has been confined to his bed for recovery. With no relatives nearby, a great-niece, practically living on the other side of the nation, has been contacted to arrange for elderly healthcare. In a rush, Sonia Rojas has been hired to look after Gus.

Alas, Gus' nightmare has begun! Observant as usual, Kinsey starts to notice, almost immediately, that something is wrong. However, no one else has yet to see the same thing that Kinsey is witnessing. Determined, Kinsey starts to investigate into Sonia and her background. However, Sonia is two steps ahead of her.

*T* is a fantastic book that illustrates our favorite heroine/detective and her witty battles with her adversarial nemesis. In addition, we, as readers, are reminded how elderly abuse and identity theft were like in the 80's.

I read this when it came out and thought it was pretty good. The first half, about how people figured out how probability worked, was really entertaining. The end, about how the geniuses on Wall St. conquered risk, is so wrong it's hilarious. Bernstein is a victim of what Taleb calls the ludic fallacy -- mistaking well-defined games like craps for the truly unpredictable.

So go read "The Black Swan" or "Fooled by Randomness" instead.

Against The Gods is a popular account of the history of financial risk management. The author takes us through a journey of discovery spanning almost a thousand years, from the introduction of Arabic numerals and the concept of zero, to the most sophisticated derivative instruments of modern finance. At each point in history when a great leap forward was made, the personalities involved are introduced, and the advances they are credited with are explained. All throughout, mankind's age-old struggle to measure and control uncertainty is seen to stumble time and again against the same, seemingly insurmountable problem: There is no guarantee that what happened in the past will continue to happen in the future.

The book is highly recommended for anyone seeking to understand the origins of modern risk management and what the concept of risk really means.

Risk Management has always been interesting to me, and learning about the history of it through this book has increased my understanding tremendously. The book is written very well, and it reads very easily for the material being discussed. I was pleasantly surprised as I delved further and further into the book.

My friends and colleagues have a hard time believing that one of the most entertaining books I have ever read is about risk management and probability. Yet, Peter Bernstein's masterpiece bestseller is just that. By tracing the development of risk through the ages, he sets the personalities of the key innovators against the background of the times, and shows the practicality of what they did and how it changed the way we look at the world.

Most of my favorite mathematicians are profiled here, in witty and digestible bites of prose that often read more like a novel than a business book. The chapter titles themselves bear witness to the delightful style of the author: The Man with the Sprained Brain, The Measure of Our Ignorance and The Fantastic System of Side Bets are just a few examples. The segues between chapters and sections are also very well-done - creating a bit of suspense and making this quite a page-turner.

With apologies for seeming trite, there is a high probability, at little risk, of reaping a great reward from the story told by Mr. Berstein.

There are two things that I really liked about this book, and one thing that I didn't. The good things:

1) The author's vast knowledge of the financial markets, from most of a century of experience.
2) His extensive and entertaining history of risk analysis.

The bad thing:

His attempts to explain math concepts that he apparently doesn't understand very well.

His history of risk analysis was a pleasure to read -- from Fibonacci and Cardano, to Markowitz and Sharpe. My favorite, was his coverage of Francis Galton, the man who measured everything.

Above all, the greatest value in this book is that it's packed with the author's knowledge of finance, from 63 years of experience. He's 89 years old now, and appears to still be going strong.

This book is well worth reading.

My favorite quote from the book:
Today's hero is often tomorrow's blockhead.(pg 297)

Although the book's a propaganda piece of O'Rourke's Libertarian views, it's a lot of fun to read and gives some insights into the life in places where one will hardly even travel to.

Smug rich people and their propagandists don't make me laugh, no matter how cute they think they are.
Regarding why some countries are poor and others rich, it's not complicated. The rich nations have been imposing disastrous neoliberal economic policies upon the poor nations that concentrate wealth, destroy local economies, and decimate labor and environmental protections.
Generations of invasions and colonialism haven't helped matters either.
Moreover, those people who work for economic justice are often oppressed by the state forces the rich countries arm and train. For example, the U.S.-backed Colombian forces and paramilitaries kill a couple hundred union activists each year. Subtle Voices: Cries from Colombia and The Profits Of Extermination: How U.S. Corporate Power is Destroying Colombia

O'Rourke does what the rest of the corporatists do, they co-opt the brand "conservative" while they divert their audiences from the realities of geopolitics.
For some actual understanding of economics, I'd recommend When Corporations Rule the World andThe Corporation.

"The money hunger grows on what it feeds. So everyone is compelled to take part in the wild goose chase, and the hunger for possession gets an ever stronger hold of man. It becomes the most important part of life; every thought is on money, all the energies are bent on getting rich, and presently the thirst for wealth becomes a mania, a madness that possesses those who have and those who have not.
Existence has become an unreasoning, wild dance around the golden calf, a mad worship of God Mammon. In that dance and in that worship man has sacrificed all his finer qualities of heart and soul - kindness and justice, honor and manhood, compassion and sympathy with his fellowman. Each for himself and devil take the hindmost. Is it any wonder that in this mad money chase are developed the worst traits of man - greed, envy, hatred, and the basest passions? Man grows corrupt and evil; he becomes mean and unjust; he resorts to deceit, theft, and murder."
-Alexander Berkman

PJ O'Rourkes books crack me up. But you still can learn from them. This book is a funny, but true, perspective on various economies. Not from a real scientific perspective, but rather "the Man on the Street".

Barring none, this is the place for a novice P.J. O'Rourke reader to start. He has been in a slight slump as of late, but he is at his peak here. I loaned my first copy to someone who never returned it. If I lose this copy, I would buy it again.

This is O'Rourke's essay on economics, in it he analyzes why some societies work economically and why some do not, regardless of geography or access to natural resources. It has often been said that to be funny you first have to be smart. Here O'Rourke demonstrates that he knows more than a little about free market economics. He posesses keen powers of observation and an even sharper wit. His innate intelligence comes through.

How much funnier would he be had he not burned out all those brain cells in the '60s? It's not likely he could be! This one is hard to top.

P.J. O'Rourke manages to dizzy his audience with a tautological series of stories, comparsions, and self-defacement and then nauseatingly spews empty paragraphs. Don't know what a tautology is? Read this book, you'll figure it out.

An author either takes pride in his ignorance or banks on his authority. O'Rourke attempts to do both, the former almost always shining through the latter. Coming away, you'll feel like you learned something. Of course you did! It just took him 10 angles, 5 anecdotes, and 8 less-than-appropriate similes to convey a Macro 101 principle. If you want a good laugh, read this book. If you want someone who knows what they're talking about, keep looking

A very entertaining book but unfortunately very true. The crowd goes for a supremely confident demagogue who, when everything comes crashing down, is unable to recognize his culpability. Obama anyone?

I liked the writing style of any of Bonner's books and this one book, the subject is very appropriate for today's markets. I'd advice anyone concerned about where to invest their money right now to take a read.

As i read this book, it felt more and more like a heavily opinionated diatribe that belonged on an editorial page of your local newspaper. By the time i got to chapter 6, War and Rememberance, it was more than i could take. For example, "And thus though the history of warfare is a history of appalling spectacles, though in every chapter of it the bodies are pressed like flies between the pages, almost nowhere will you find any explaination for why they are there. Who can find a single reason for World War I that justifies the inconvenience of even a single person, let alone the deaths of nine million of them?" The cause of WWI specifically is complex and subject to debate. However, to generalize this to all wars is inaccurate. Prepare youself there are numerous claims like this through out the text in different historical contexts. There are few footnotes to justify assertions or statements. The authors present themselves as historians, psychologists, economists, and i do not know what else as the text proceeds. That people could swallow this whole only affirms maybe their only central premise that people are like lemmings who accept doctrine without critical analysis. There are many books written and much cogent historical analysis of wars and their causes. The authors seem to conveniently forget that periodically tyrants rouse their populations into aggressive wars to spread their ideologies. Am i to think that those being attacked have no good reason to defend themselves? For example, am i to think that the world should have just accepted Hitler's super race program and their fate? I am sorry but this book is nonsense for the most part and it is not even worth finishing. If you desire to read a decent book on mob psychology or market psychology I recommend the following books as far superior - The Devil Take the Hindmost, Manias, Panics, and Crashes by Kindleberger, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841) by Charles Mackay, or for the Psychology Perspective on Crowds and Mass Movements The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. I am sorry but this book is drivel.

Mobs, Messiahs and Markets doesn't take an in depth look at just one aspect of public life. Instead, it provides the reader with a variety of topics that stimulate questions about why we do or don't do what we do. I don't care to read about historical do-gooders so the first chapter was worrisome, don't worry! I'm glad Bonner and Rajiva touch on so many subjects, not just a few. The powerful simple introduction to the Group Think phenomenon sold me on the rest of the book! William Bonner and Lila Rajiva are Patriots who provide comfort to those waking up to the skewed world we live in. Why are people so easily lead down the destructive paths politicians and bankers create and promote? How is it that Republican cross-dressers for over 80 years covet abstinence until marriage but in a short 24 hours are suddenly feigning and defending their nominee whose daughter is pregnant out of wedlock? How is it that the socialist cross-dressing democrats can suddenly covet marriage and in a short 24 hours suddenly have contempt for a child having a child out of wedlock? Read this book and get a clue.

After reading about group-think in this book, I discussed it with friends and family and surprisingly few had heard of it. Those who did recognize the term didn't realize the power it has. Group Think grants astonishing Power to the so-called leaders we elect. The authors do us all a favor by making us aware of an important phenomenon. At a time when politicians openly ignore the constitution and spend fiat money beyond their means and when main stream media outlets, i.e. radio, television and newspapers, don't provide solutions but distractions, Bonner & Rajiva, brilliantly, stimulate the reader to ask questions. One question I recently asked as result of reading this book: Why does the GOP presidential nominee promote Country First vs. America First? We all assume he means America but why not just say it? They don't give you a complete course on the Federal Reserve Bank, like "Secrets of the Temple" does; but, obviously, they didn't set out to do that. When 66% of the reviews are positive and 14% are neutral, the logical conclusion is that this book is worth buying. If you have expectations of this book and this book doesn't meet them; don't lambast the authors or the book, it's not their fault, it's your expectations fault.

Mobs, Messiahs and Markets doesn't solve anything perse, so if that's what you're looking for you won't find solutions that stand on their own. What you will discover is an awareness that stimulates thought. Are you an American striving to take back your country? This book provides you, among many things, with references to make you aware of political, financial & media trickery. The Media in collusion with
Government & Wall Street spends hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop slogans and graphics that captivate a viewer and serve an agenda. And what of the 24-hour news station that uses dramatic music, moving graphics and the word ALERT colored bright red to announce that a potential vice-presidential nominee is getting off a plane. You would think a dramatic alert of that nature would be something like a 10.0 earthquake in California. An aware viewer would see through their games and listen only to realize that their slogans and information are fake, taken out of context, dramatized for effect with an intention to distract and control the viewer's awareness. Mobs, Messiahs and Markets will slap party followers in the face; hopefully they stay awake and come out swinging. You can Google The Bankers Manifesto of 1896 as it is not illustrated in the book. The manifesto clearly shows how a small powerful group of bankers over 112 years ago had knowledge of how to control a herd or mob. They were brilliant then and proof of their brilliance is evidenced by current events. The authors brilliantly expose the do-gooder power mongers of the world and cast light on the shadows they are used to lurking in. I doubt the authors ever intended on comparing Martin Luther King to Hitler types. If your reading reviews of scorned readers keep in mind this book touches on many facets that have bankrupted investors and kept people ignorant. It appeals to the masses, so these negative reviews, in my opinion, are shallow, subjective and did not deter my interest in the book. I never got the impression I was buying an in depth book about Mobs, Messiahs, or Markets.

Expect to be stimulated with this book. What you do with that stimulation is up to you. This reader hopes you discuss the subjects of public life with a lot of people to enliven a revolution away from party politics and inflation. You might read another book to gain more depth on a subject like group think. Then you can better recognize whether you're blindly following or not. Ignorance is bliss; pursuing truth carries the risk that revelations will not be pleasant.

This is a brilliant and very funny take down of the "system".
Rajiva and Bonner know their stuff. They take the 'lies, damn lies and statistics' put out by the financial system and put them together into a narrative that reads like fiction (that's what it is anyway). What you end up with is a fascinating read with quotable lines on every page.

The book has too many interesting angles to tackle here but it is really outstanding in dealing with the propaganda-controlled world we live in and with the whole globalist agenda, culminating in the credit and housing crises of today. Most important, the authors explain the mentality behind it all - the mindset of the politically correct elitists and corporate crooks who run this country.

You won't agree with everything they say. It doesn't matter, you should still do do yourself a favor and read this book before the elections so you will know that there is only one party in the US - Wall Street and that there is only one language it does business in - PR.

If bananas are the world's perfect food (as banana growers would have us all believe) then this book is the banana of literature. Sum it up in two words: brilliant and heartbreaking. Why are you reading this review--you should be reading this book! I'd like to give it 5 stars twice! And so on . . .

I've only once put up a review on a book I disliked. Actually I rarely write a review, but have several times in the past and usually on a book that really touched me and stood out in my mind. This book certainly stands out so I will review it. I absolutely hated this book! I'm so disappointed because I was fully expecting to really enjoy it. Not so! As one other reviewer put it - "one mind-numbing, expletive-filled page after another" fits the book perfectly. I kept plugging away, expecting to hook up with the book, but by page 100 I just gave it up. A terrible disappointment.

I've never seen the movie, which is strange because I'm Irish. But i loved the book. It had elements of The Catcher in the Rye and the works of John Steinbeck. It also must have been a massive influence on Vernon God Little (DBC Pierre does live in Ireland). There seems to be a strain of this kind of literature in recent years, and while there are better books out there, it is such a strong strain of literature that there is no harm in reading all the books. I read this straight through, and some of it was hillarious. I think it could have had a better editor though.

Re-reading this after a decade, (really rated 3.5 stars) over the past two nights--half the book at a sitting, as the pace demands such immersion--I find the book more horrifying than the hilarious incidents I dimly recalled. The penchant of the Irish for gallows humo[u]r has never been more thoroughly hung up, drawn, and quartered. It's an act that McCabe in his later "Breakfast on Pluto" again takes on: sexual abuse, pedophilia, dressing up a lad in women's clothing, not to mention the usual clerical abuse, crazies, drunks, slatterns, bogmen, poor parenting skills, and village layabouts.

If McCabe was, say, from London with no Irish connections, this book might well have been vilified as stereotype. The movie version, by the way, played up the clerical abuse and Marian visionary subplots much more prominently than they were featured in the book taken as a whole. Anyone familiar with Ireland since 1985-2000 would know why these two plot-points would gain presumably an eager audience expecting scandal and satire via the scenes around fallen idols of a past generation.

As it is, the immersion that the prose forces upon you makes for a bracing plunge into a demented, yet often logical in its illogical reliance on instinct rather than intellect, that pulses in Francie's head. The black humor of many passages, as the novel goes on, becomes less entrancing, and as the casualty rate climbs of those near Francie, you tend to lose your identification with the protagonist. This element comes close to the book and film or "A Clockwork Orange," although McCabe eschews Burgess' philosophical and theological undertones concerning free will, psychological trauma, and sin. The political and sectarian allusions that the Publisher's Weekly blurb cited above mention completely escaped me, I confess, although I noted only that Nugent, like Joe Purcell's surname are Norman derived and not native Celtic, and this registered softly as another badge of distinction. Any stress upon the Nugent's Protestantism has to also consider that Joe too becomes as much a part of that class as the Nugents, and Joe, so it seemed at the start of the book, was pretty much equal to Francie in status. Any resentment Francie harbors for the Nugents seems much more class-based than religiously fueled. Francie's animus heeds shame more than sin.

The book would have been far better if the demands of a slasher-seeking marketplace mean that at least an up-and-coming writer (such was McCabe circa 1992 when this was published in Britain) cannot put out a frightening but well-honed hundred-page novella but has to stretch out the tale with padded incidents and repititious scenes so it swells well more than twice that length for a book-length manuscript to sell.

Still, this is where to start, and then Breakfast. If Breakfast had come first, it may well have reversed the order of merit; the two novels are paired well, for better and worse, in similar set-ups and characterization and style. I read a later novel, Call Me the Breeze, which again tries the tale told by a misfit full of sound and fury, but to less successful results. Trouble is, even in this his best book (although Breakfast's a close second), the traces of McCabe's influences indelibly endure: Salinger, Faulkner, Joyce, Beckett, and Burgess among others. The author knows how to channel these formidible forebears into his own take on early 60s Ireland, but the pat nature of some of the incidents that Francie finds himself in on his picaresque journey from home to asylum back to home and back to incarceration seem--as in other such allegorical or symbolically driven stories from the past centuries--a bit too neatly arranged and so to bely the realism that in the many smaller details in the childhood and village scenes do show that McCabe's capable of more original craft.

McCabe's prose is by far the best feature of this book, and how he manages to out you into Francie's convoluted mentality while affording by carefully placed seemingly tangential details that clue us into what the narrator himself cannot understand is skillfully done. So much so that this technique over the long course of even a rather short novel means that its pages are densely packed with what becomes dispiriting, depressing, and self-lacerating incidents which no plucky turn-of-phrase after a while can repair. This slim book weighs you down.

The stamina of author, plot, and main character cannot last until the last pages with the reckless spirit with which it started. Too much sadness accumulates. But perhaps, despite the flaws, this is appropriate for this type of story, when as the horrors mount, the laughter fades and we find ourselves face-to-face with the muck. I remember what no character here recalls, even in an Ireland then (circa 1962--Bay of Pigs incident is in the background of the latter portion of the novel) compelled to try to educate its children in Irish, that muck comes fittingly from "muc," Irish word for pig.

As a stark raving looney myself (albeit a medicated one) I could understand Francie's deep obsessions and inability to grasp reality more than some. This book touched me deeply and the sometimes horrific, selfish, and often childish aspects of insanity are captured wonderfully. If you truly want to delve into mental illness trash your copies of Catcher and the Rye and read this. Obsession, paranoia, hallucinations, crushing despair... it's all in here and tossed about with the wicked humor that keeps us alive at times. I don't know if Mr. McCabe knew what he was tapping into but he did it successfully!

The first half of "Death Benefits" is much better than the second. Unfortunately, a great character, special security consultant Max Stillman, unaccountably becomes stupid in the final third of the book. He's way ahead of the main protagonist, John Walker, and the readers in the first part of the book, then way behind both Walker and the readers in the last part. I knew what was going on in the town Walker and Stillman were investigating 100 pages before they figured it out. Case in point, when Stillman and Walker saw that the local police department -- serving a tiny hamlet of around 400 people -- had something like 18 police cruisers and a professionally staffed police department, they only thought it mildly interesting. (In reality, a town of this size would likely have one cruiser, maybe two cops tops, and they'd likely be of the minimum-wage lifer variety.) The other problem is that somehow Stillman, a professional security consultant, Walker, an insurance analyst helping Stillman, and a gonzo computer hacker accompanying them, somehow went out on an investigation without anyone carrying a cell phone.

No, I'm sorry, I love Thomas Perry's work usually, but this one badly fell apart about halfway in.

I had to take an unexpected trip recently and someone handed me this book to fill the time. I'd never read anything by Perry before, but now I'm going to be seeking out his earlier work and watching for new ones. It's a thriller that's big on character as well as action, and I'm amazed it hasn't already come out as a movie. John Walker is an analyst in the headquarters of a San Francisco insurance company, a small-ish, old fashioned sort of outfit that competes successfully with the conglomerates by concentrating on service. A young woman, a rising sales person in the Pasadena office with whom he had had a brief relationship eighteen months before, seems to have skipped out in the middle of a $12-million-dollar fraud, and Max Stillman, the company's "security expert," takes Walker along on his investigation. The case, which now includes a murder, is brought to a not very satisfactory conclusion less than halfway through the book -- obviously, there's more to come. Walker is sent off to the company's Miami office to help out in the immediate aftermath of a hurricane, where he stumbles upon a very similar scam and hollers for help. Stillman quickly arrives in Miami and the chase is on again -- and Perry brings new meaning to the phrase "criminal conspiracy." Along the way, Walker gets involved with a young female hacker whose boss supplies Stillman with illegally obtained information for his work, and she gets caught up in the massive fraud case as well. All three principal characters are nicely developed, with Walker becoming less innocent and more active as he learns from Stillman, and the details of the insurance business and how ingenious insurance fraud can be are interesting as well. The puzzle takes awhile to solve, . . . and I think I'll just stay the heck away from little New Hampshire towns.

I once accidently got a subscription to "GQ". I found it very interesting, since apparently what men want most is to be like James Bond. Drop a man off in a strange city and he wants to go to the right restaurant, order the right drink, have woman throw themselves at him, and most of all, win the admiration of other good men. Oh, and fight evil, too.

Thomas Perry want to help you with this. He not only wants to tell you the right drink, he wants you to win the respect of the bartender ("The Pursuit"), to successfully hide from the Mafia ("Butcher's Boy"), and to become the perfect mass-murderer ("Sleeping Dogs"). His books are practically how-to manuals for coolness, as long as you don't let sissy things like morality get in your way. In this book, "Death Benefits", he wants to show you how wrong you are to want a secure job at an insurance company when you could be chasing criminals across the continent with your dashing boss, limitless expense account, and adoring female colleague.

The book has an interesting 3-part structure, starting when young innocent John Walker is lured away from his cubicle when a former girlfriend disappears and is accused of fraud; he agrees to help the free-lance investigator Max Stillman because he wants to clear the woman of involvement in the crime. While doing that, he has to help out at the company's Florida branch when a hurricane comes roaring in, and while there, stumbles upon clues that lead him to a small New England town where the solution to all his questions may lie..... Walker is an engaging character, and you can't help but root for him to "find himself" as he solves these mysteries. The problem is that Perry finally over-reaches with the small New England town, stealing his plot, improbably, from H.P. Lovecraft, with regrettable results.

If you aren't a "GQ" kind of man, you might even get tired of Max Stillman, who fights crime with methods the police aren't allowed to use, and triumphs over evil while making loads of money. He's not even slightly believable, so it may seem a waste of time following his exploits and writing down tips in case *you're* ever a free-lance crime-fighter. I personally prefer the old-fashioned police procedural, where I may learn something real about crime and punishment.

This was a good read. It wasn't a story in which you could predict what was going to happen. I enjoyed it. I also liked the Jane Whitefield novels by this author.

I have been gobbling up Thomas Perry novels ever since discovering his Jane Whitfield series, so I only glanced at the cover when I picked this one up from the bin. I have to confess I was let down when I saw that it was about the insurance industry--what could be more boring? But "boring" is exactly the wrong word to use to describe this wonderfully exciting novel. I was hooked from the first few pages and just could not put it down. This is one of those suspense thrillers where you love the characters and are so swept up in the story you forget to make dinner for yourself. The disappearance of a woman who looks as if she is involved in a scheme to peculate millions leads a former lover on a quest to uncover her fate, and he soon finds himself embroiled in a deep conspiracy. This is believable, a book about greed and love, that will fascinate you.

I found this book to be an interesting read into the mayoralty of Richard Daley. To be sure, Daley ruled Chicago as if it were his own personal fiefdom, employing ruthlessness and corruption on more than a few occasions. In reading this biography, I found that despite his flagrant corruption, Daley did maintain Chicago as an economically viable city at a time when other major Midwestern cities (i.e., Detroit and St. Louis) were crumbling and burning, and suffering from the mass exodous of the middle class. Daley was quite successful in making sure that Chicago did not suffer a similar fate. What interested me as well was the civil rights situation in Chicago during the 1960s. Daley maintained segregation within the city, but reached an accomodation with the black leadership, as they delivered votes to him. In exchange, the black leaders and their supporters received various forms of political patronage. This was in sharp contrast to what was the situation in the South at the time. I think that this difference was exempified by the rather cool treatment that was given to Martin Luther King by the black leadership when he visited Chicago in 1965.

This is a detailed book about the political machine Richard J. Daley built in Chicago. In this book, you realize the corrupt nature of a political machine. Votes were stolen, money squandered on people hooked into the machine, and the violence against those who opposed the policies. It is a wonder that the machine is still somewhat working. Machine politics is a nasty business. Somehow regardless of all this, Richard Daley successfully managed the third largest city in the United States. He improved the administration, built the infrastructure, and generally was not corrupt himself. He was the head of the machine though and bears responsibility for the corruption.

This is an in depth expose of the Richard J. Daley machine. It will take some time to read through the 400 plus pages of this political biography of Daley. A good read for someone interested in Chicago.

As a European visitor on my first trip to the US I was fascinated by the signature of then Mayor Richard M. Daley on so many signs, permits etc. I was also impresssed by the respect and affection many people has for the mayor . This book describes the laying of the foundation of that Daley dynasty by Richard J. Daley. It tends to focus on the machinations of the Democratic Party rather than the benefits Daley brought to Chicago. Not as well writted as Caro's biographies, but still readable. I'm looking forward to reading "The Boss".

A great book with contents delivered in a clear, concise writing style. It reads so fluidly, one can forget he/she is learning history while riding along with a fascinating narrative. I very much enjoyed it and learned a great deal from the exhaustive research that obviously went into the project.

My only criticism, however, keeps me from giving five stars: the co-authors seem obsessed with housing and perceived racism issues in Chicago - at times to the extent that Daley is almost forgotten in their drive to bring home a point. If this is where their academic background is based that is fine, but the reader deserves to know this going in instead of being advertised a full one volume biography type of study. This was an occasional distraction, but one that usually ended soon enough with a paragraph break - welcomed with a 'whew, glad we got back on track'- from this reader.

All in all, a fine book very much worth your time, but be advised not quite what it might seem.

This has to be one of the best biographies that I have ever read. Before reading it, not having grown up in Chicago, I was relatively unaware of the specific goings on regarding the reign of Daley the First. However, upon finishing it, I suddenly have a vastly improved understanding of the man and also of the history of the city during the fifties, sixties, and seventies. Few persons had more power as politicians than Daley did which is quite surprising considering the relative lowliness of his position. It seems inconceivable to us today that he was able to "slate" the entirety of Illinois politicians, but that is precisely what he did for several decades. The secret was his holding onto to the positions of Mayor and Cook County Chief simultaneously. This effectively made him boss until death. By never letting go of them both he was able to run the state. In the 1960 election, he "worked" endlessly to ensure a Kennedy victory (although Kennedy would have won the electoral college even had he lost Illinois).

As a personality, Daley remains distant and incomplete even after the last page of American Pharaoh is turned. I cannot think of another famous person I could say the same about, but the subject's nebulousness is certainly not the fault of the authors. Daley came from the shadows and stayed in the shadows. He was a throwback even at the time he was elected, and as a man he had far more in common with those born in the nineteenth century than those born in the twentieth. The only thing in life which seemed to motivate him was the acquisition of power. He was faithful to wife and had little interest in money or drinking or anything outside the strengthening his empire. Daley was a caricature of ambition, but his drive made him something he, perhaps, was never supposed to be. This is not a work you will soon forget.

I even haven't receive this item yet. and the seller never reply me. I wish I could dispute this transaction!!!

First, let it be said that there seems to be no decent book on Investment Theory out there, and that, in that sense, this one might be slightly better than others on the market...

Yet, reading most of the book for an Investment course, I found it to be unnecessarily wordy, often VERY repetitive, and unclear about the basic conceptual ideas behind the theory.

Most of the problems stem from the fact that the mathematics used is overly simplistic, and that no effort is made to focus on clear ideas. Instead of presenting the CAPM and APT models by formally setting the conceptual framework, stating the assumptions, introducing proper mathematical tools to tackle the development, and coming back to highlight key concepts, the book tries to circumvent any slightly difficult area by providing an endless string of confused explanations. The CAPM and APT models are not easy to REALLY grasp and although the book provided me with some "quick-fix" tools and basic definitions to address practical problems, it did not give me any insight into the underlying concepts and ideas. And without that, there is no real and lasting understanding...

The book is definitely not for readers looking for a mathematically formal coverage of the topic and might be better suited to Business students seeking a very basic introduction. But even then, I am not sure that a 700+ pages book of muddled diatribes is appropriate...

Great book! It's comprehensive and easy to understand. Highly recommended textbook.

This book is well organized, but you better have a solid calc and stats theory background. The newest edition has more chapters. Book is more wordy than concise.

This is the tome used in top MBA programs across the US.

It's comprehensive and filled with "extras" like website recs and sample CFA questons.

Everything you need to know is here.

2 thumbs up.