Bernstein Books

I have a lot of respect for finance professors. To quote a felicitous expression, they perform "mathematics in flesh and blood". They are the surgeons of the modern economy, cutting through inefficiencies and making sure the blood of capital flows into the arteries of corporate accounts or personal savings. And like surgeons, society gratifies them with generous pay and social prestige: the time is over when finance specialists were snubbed by their economist colleagues and kept on the margins of the discipline. Some may even get a Nobel prize in economics, while many may complement their academic salary with management consulting or hands-on investment.

All these pursuits are perfectly legitimate, and finance professors are usually nice individuals endowed with a sharp mind. But Bernstein overemphasizes their worth and gets way too far in praising their accomplishments. The chronicler turns into a sycophant when he writes that "the vigor, the freshness, and the extraordinary clarity of Samuelson's mind would be stunning to encounter in a man of any age". Or that Robert Shiller's "ingenious and restless mind seems never to come to sleep".

But leaving excessive praise aside, the book makes several strong claims that I found worth considering. The first is that the era of financial theory is over. Finance as an academic discipline is based on theories--the Capital Ideas of the title, described in the prequel volume-- that were developed from 1954 to 1972, starting from Markowitz's essay on portfolio selection ("Markowitz came along, and there was light"). The consequence is that most finance academics have now left theory behind, either to launch attacks on neoclassical assumptions based on behavioral observations, or to adopt an institutional perspective on how markets work in order to design better rules and instruments for managing risk. Others have left academia altogether and have moved to the dark side of portfolio investing, where they have created structures surprisingly close to the university setting: "we conduct research; we discuss it and improve it; and we build models and empirically test them. And in some sense we publish them and verify them when we test them in the market", says Myron Scholes, a Nobel prize laureate turned investor.

The concentration of discoveries in a short time span and among a small group of innovators is by no means unique in the history of science. But past experience also shows us that well-established paradigms can be radically challenged and overcome by new ideas coming from the fringe of the discipline that put past theories into oblivion. Nothing stands still. The Capital Ideas are nor written in stone. And a new theory of finance may very well emerge that will match Markowitz's approach to portfolio selection, Modigliani and Miller's insights into corporate finance, the Efficient Market Hypothesis, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, and options pricing theory.

The second claim made by the author is that the Capital Ideas are not vulnerable to empirical challenge. Behavioral Finance has pointed out many situations in which the axioms of neoclassical theory do not apply, but as Andrew Lo notes, these findings are only "a collection of anomalies, not a real theory. You need a theory to beat a theory". The same applies to statistical tests, which have repeatedly failed to confirm the validity of theoretical models. For Fisher Black, another Nobel prize laureate, you should put your trust only in logic and theory, and forget about statistical empirical results.

But aren't the financial models designed by theorists repeatedly proven wrong by market crashes and financial crisis, at the cost of staggering financial loss and dire economic consequences? What worth is a theory that fails to foresee those crises, or worse seems to contribute to their occurence through unfettered innovation and mismanagement of risk? Bernstein responds that the creators of modern finance were not taken by surprise by difficulties in the implementation of their models. The academics knew as well as anyone that the real world was different from what they were defining, and that the models were an approximation to reality and a guide to strategy rather than a precise replication of the world. Perhaps, but the technicians of finance went way beyond their academic masters and really believed in their models, without the necessary dose of skepticism that only a familiarity with academic research can cultivate.

The third idea that I would like to comment upon is what social scientists call the performativity of economics: the idea that reality looks increasingly like the theory, that "powerful forces are constantly at work in the markets to bring the resemblance between theory and reality closer with the passage of time." The real world itself is on a path toward an increasing resemblance to the theoretical world described in Capital Ideas. Even research that focusses on the distance between theory and reality actually contribute to the convergence between the two. Behavioral Finance, Bernstein notes, is by nature self-disfulfilling, and it has become the driving force toward the Efficient Market Hypothesis that it so vigorously attacks. The CAPM may be outdated as a theoretical model, but its influence has never been so great, as it has been transformed into a powerful real-world tool for managing money and for calibrating investors' performance. Theory creates a world of our own making.

But here we should stop and ask ourselves whether we really want a world shaped by financial theory. A world that has gone quant is a world unintelligible to most mortals, a world without moral compass and where things regularly get out of control. Bernstein was right in pointing toward the world-making quality of financial theory; but he fails to consider the moral and political implications of this basic intuition.

I have recommended this and his previous book for finance graduate students at the University of Maryland.

In the early 1950s, graduate student Harry Markowitz presented his Ph.D. dissertation to the University of Chicago economics department. The response was less than encouraging. "This isn't a dissertation in economics," Milton Friedman told Markowitz. "It's not math, it's not economics, it's not even business administration." Whatever it was, Markowitz's heterodox theory of portfolio selection changed finance forever and earned a Nobel Prize. Financial historian and investment manager Peter L. Bernstein humanizes his saga of great shifts in financial theory by organizing it around eminent thinkers (Markowitz, Myron Scholes, Franco Modigliani, Robert Merton, Bill Sharpe and others, if you ever want to look up a finance guru). Deepening his analysis with insights from "behavioral finance," Bernstein describes how these innovators generated and extended the now-orthodox "capital ideas" of portfolio selection, capital structure, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, the efficient market hypothesis and the Black-Scholes-Merton theory of option pricing. Bernstein's erudition is dazzling, his explanations pellucid and his narrative filled with scintillating characters. getAbstract doesn't need to hedge: you'll find this overview of current finance theory and practice brilliant, even if you don't know your alpha from alfalfa.

Maybe this is a great intro to classic theory, but then there is something wrong with classical thinking.

My one-star rating is for his "forgiveness" of the Long Term Capital Management gang, since no one could have predicted what actually happened.

LTCM managers (inducing Merton and Sholes, subjects of chapters) had excessive confidence in models based on theories that have not been even come close to being validated.

It is ironic that Amazon pairs this book with "The Black Swan" in their "Buy Two" promotion since Bernstein has clearly been "fooled by randomness".

This was not an easy read, but it was worth it. I received my MBA in 1976. Much of this book was an explanation of the effects of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) on current investment practices. He assumes that the reader is well versed with the intricacies of CAPM. I had to go back to other sources to review CAPM, but once I did, the book was a great explanation of how CAPM and other academic innovations have had a practical effect on portfolio management. When I finished the book, I had to admit that I was not able to apply much to my personal portfolio management, but I have a much better understanding of what my pension plan administrator is thinking about as well as what certain mutual funds managers are doing. The book is more beneficial for the professional investor than the individual investor.

While this book was OK, I found too much about bin Laden within the pages. I felt that part should be a separate book. All-in-all it was a fast read and somewhat informative. Good book for students to use if they are looking for both sides of the story.

The beginning of this book is very difficult to stomach. Although it has been almost two years since this horrific event, it still seems like yesterday to me. Right from page one, the author begins to talk about the people who jumped from the Twin Towers. He continues talking about this for a few pages. For me, seeing people jump is the one very vivid image that still haunts me. He goes into very graphic detail about the jumpers. About how one man was impaled on a street sign. Reading this book was like reliving Sept 11 all over again. If you're not ready to relive the experience, please do not read this book. The rest of the book gives a short bio on some of the terrorists and some of the innocent people who were killed on 9/11. The book also documents the growing hatred of Amercia and how the terrorists came to be. It was surprising to note just how much the FBI knew but how little they actually did.

This is,without doubt,the best book I've come across about that dastardly act committed on 9/11.We have all watched many hours of televised newscasts and specials covering this event;but what this book does is put human faces on the people who were involved.
The perpetrators of this act were filled with hatred and represent the many thousands of others like them who have bought into or have sympathy for an unbridled hatred called jihah.In contrast to them,are all the people who fell victim to this hatred and had their lives stolen from them, their families and friends.This book shows what it means to have good or evil in people's hearts.Unfortunately,the fight against terrorism will be long and difficult,but as history has shown time and time again,that good always prevails over evil.
This book presents the facts and shows how the terrorists set out to attack America,the bastion for freedom and liberty for the world.They were encouraged by a lack of action,and further, took advantage of the freedoms enjoyed in the country and the great benefit of doubt given them by a country whose fundamental concept is of freedom and liberty of the individual,whoever he is.While they like to demand,and take advantage of this free society,would themselves deny it to others,and seek to destroy it while imposing their own sick oppression,tyranny and hatred on their own people and anyone else they can.
While most of this book is very good,I take great exception to the attempt to compare 9/11 with Hiroshima,on page 247.
"Perhaps the only comparable event in history was Hiroshima,but even Hiroshimahad had taken place in the context of a declared war.Hiroshima was a surprise attack but not a sneak attack.Sept 11 was both.Pearl Harbor,maybe,but no warped stretch of any demented imagination,can a comparison of 9/11 and Hiroshima be made!Any such thinking is deplorable.
20 years of terrorist attacks going unanswered forced America to embark on The War on Terror.There is only one outcome that can be an option;and that has to,and will be, complete victory.Anything else is unthinkable.
And then again, on page 251,"What happened in Hiroshima and in the terrorism [in New York] is the same because there are many people who can't recover one tooth or one nail."Again,an unbelievable notion.
A very important paragraph on page 250 deserves quoting.
"Why were we hated so much? Hadn't we been on the Muslin side in Afghanistin? Didn't we help Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo? Wasn't it the case that millions of Muslins ,as
president Bush pointed out in his speech before Congress,practiced their religion freely in the United States of America,to which they had come of their own free will? Clearly,we had something to learn about the unreasoning and unreasonable anti-American fury that existed in the Muslin world,where Osama bin Laden was being treated not as a villain but as a hero.There was a lesson there someplace,and it would be contemplated for a long time into the future.In the meantime,public support quickly built, not just for a retalitory strike,a few cruise missles launched at a target,but for a long and complicated war against an only semivisible adversary.The Bush administration vowed to fight that war for a long time ,against the terrorists themselves and against those who harbored terrorists,which in the first instance, meant Osama bin Laden and the Taliban of Afghanistan."
How can anyone who is unwilling to fight for freedom expect to live in freedom?
I am writing this review just 4 days before the FREE ELECTION is to take place in Iraq.
Many countries have failed to support America,and it appears many would be joyful if America fails in her War on Terror.America won't fail and is in for the long haul;just as she was in WW1,WW11,struggle against Communism and other wars.These countries should ponder the President,s words."Either you're with us or against us."
On page 187 we are reminded of what the President said on Septmber 11,2001:
"Terrorism against our nation will not stand."
He has remained true to that promise.
God Bless America!

I found this book to be very good. It introduces you to many people involved to day.....from Mohammed Atta to the pilot of flight 11 to firefighters. I felt the book did a good job of portraying the events of that day from many different points of view. If you are looking for a book with lots of photos, this isn't the book. There's a small section of photos of some victims and photos of every hijacker involved that day. It also gives a detailed description of Osama Bin Laden and why he feels the way he does towards the U.S. The only part I didn't like is it kind of jumped around a little bit in the beginning. It starts with how different people started their days. It takes you almost up to the point when the first plane hit, then for several chapters talks about Osama Bin Laden. I actually skipped the whole Osama part until I had read everything else in the book. That's my only complaint. The last few chapters I found so gripping that I couldn't put the book down. I would def. recommend this book

This is the story of the attack on our country on 9/11/01. The story goes all the way back to the late 1980's and originates in Afghanistan. Berstein does a good job of describing how bin Laden and his group of thugs got their grounding in the basics of terrorism. Not only bin Laden but some of the other members (Atta) are described in their early life.
Along with the story of the terrorists, there are stories of some of the victims of 09/11/01. Bernstein does a good job in describing their lives, so we know what America lost in this attack. Unlike other journalists, Berstein gives reasons why the FBI/CIA did not pick up on the attack.
This is a good summary of the attacks and the reasons they originated. The title sums up the surprise Americans felt when the attack came.

I first read this book around the age of 20. My mother had purchased it.
I already believed in re-incarnation because I had two clear memories of my own,...since childhood, of a nature no child of 3 or 4 could Possibly dream or fantasize about. (yet my mother had always told me they were 'dreams' when I tried to talk to her about them)

So,...at 20-ish,...here she suddenly had this book. I was a young bride, married to an adoring husband who had proposed to me the first time he saw me,...he'd explained "Something told me to look toward the door,...so I turned away from the person I was talking with and looked to the door, you came through a moment later,...and suddenly through my mind flashed the thought 'That's the girl I'm going to marry !!'... He said he felt a flood of love rush through him as he quickly made his way to my side, to introduce himself,...he already seemed (felt he knew)'everything important about me,...but my name (now)' He proposed just as quickly as he was able to,...but had to spend the next 8 months trying to convince me it was Real love and he wasn't crazy,...(it wasn't lust,...I was a plain mouse compared to his ravishing girlfriend who he dropped without an explanation) So, two years later I was to read my mother's book, about Bridey Murphy,....AT LAST,....Something Solid to confirm my own memories,...and explain the new husband's instant recognition of me, and subsequent proposal,.....he had 'remembered' me, not with his eyes, but with his soul (and the things he felt he 'already knew about me',...ALL proved to be true,....things he had No Way of 'knowing' on mere observation,....much less a flash recognition. 4 years after (I'd read the book) he decided to tell me that if there was ANYTHING to what I believed in,....he would find out, for sure, if anything ever happened to him in his (oftimes) dangerous job. And he'd added " If there IS,...then there is a way to 'come back',......and I WILL come back,...because there Can't be Anything greater in the Universe than 'love',...and Lady, I Love you !,....so God's gonna Have to understand and let me come back to find you, again" I filed that away and thought no more of it; he was young and healthy and loved life with a passion,...as far as I was concerned, my handsome young husband with the ever twinkle in his eyes,...was invincable (!)

2 years later, he was killed on the job in an accident so bad there was not enough left for me to have to go and try to identify. My children were young, one was in grade school. That one tried to comfort me. "Mom,...Dad Said he'd come back and find us, again" I believed he'd come back,...but Find us ? no. But for the next 12 months,...he visited me regularly in my dreams,...trying to help me deal with his loss,.....I was alone with my children and had no real family support.

On Nov. 11, 1977,...the Ann. of his loss,...he came one more time,...and he told me it would be the last time,..he had 'something he needed to go do',..He hugged me one last time, and then led me a few steps further,...to someone in the shadows,...and told me simply "stay with him, he'll be good to you" I woke up and spent that first Ann, of his loss comforted, Finally,...and the day was spent doing something creative, to mark his life and my on going forward. I was to celibrate every Ann. of his loss doing something 'positive' for my future,...often involving my children, who still do that,.....until last year,.....after Spring of '07,...there has been no more reason to recognize Nov. 11.

In 2000,...I married again. I'd spent 14 years looking for that 'man-in-the-shadows' and I'd finally found him. But April '07,....the husband I'd lost so long ago,...Found, me. 100+ miles from where either of us now lived,...in the City we'd lived in as a married couple for 8 years,...just a couple of miles down the road from the small church we'd been married in. He had never been to that City before,...but he'd been guided there on the only day I would be there,...and he encountered me within 5 minutes of his arrival. That was roughly a year and a half ago.
It's been rough. I can't pretend, otherwise. He's never married. I have been re-married for 18 years now. My husband accepts him 100% as being the man I lost when I was 26. (and they are the best of friends) Amazingly,....the rest of our friends,....and even my earlier husband's Present friends and family,...have all been WONDERFULLY supportive. Of my sons,...the youngest is not ready to meet his returned Dad (who's younger than him)(but he says to give him more time to get used to the idea) and the oldest who always believed his Dad would return,...has been un-reachable to be told,...if he knew,...he would be on a plane to meet him as quickly as he could arrange it.

I know I'm not talking about the book. Others have already done so far better than I can try to speak of a book I read some 38 years ago. But if Bridey's story is questionable in Anyone else's mind,.....it is NOT so, in mine, or the two husbands who's rings I now wear. We're still working through the problems (and they're Vast) but a Christian lady friend of our's summed it up pretty good : "If God, can do 'Anything',....why not, This,...also,....as long as the 3 of you love each other,...it's no-one else's right to try and judge you, or try to tell you there's a lie to what the three of you KNOW to be Fact"

I've come here to order a copy of Bridey's book for the husband who's been by my side for the last 18 years,...we tried to find it at the library yesterday,...and there isn't a copy in the whole system. Love?
Isn't that what life is Supposed to be all about ? My present mate is happy that my earlier one loved me so much he was able to cross Heaven and Earth to find me again.....and now,...God is in His Heaven and all in right in the world,...at least,...in mine.

I read this book in 1957 and thought it was great. Bought a copy to reread. It is one of the best on simple hypnosis. Using his technique anybody can do it on right subject. NOT A PARLOR GAME. WARNING: It works!

That was a question that I often asked myself on numerous occasions when her name was mentioned in connection with various things "lost". I think it was the advent of the internet which finally made it easy for me to check out the answer to my mildly irritating query when it re-emerged one day.

This particular book, in fact, answered my question and then went much further. The entire story is conveyed by a man (the author) who became personally entangled in the story and who ultimately wrote this coherent non-fictional account.

It's not really a spoiler to tell you that Bridey Murphy MacCarthy died in 1864 -- the kicker here is that Ruth Mills Simmons, born in 1923, knew all about Bridey Murphy... because she WAS Bridey Murphy (reincarnated? for lack of a better term).

This book is for people who wonder, "What happens after you die?" There are actually a lot of good answers to that question in here as the author recounts, in addition to other facts, the so-called "Bridey Murphy hypnotic sessions".

While Bernstein was really just a guy who got himself involved in this fascinating offbeat incident, he does a great job of re-telling all of what was discovered to his readers. Highly recommended for folks interested in true mysteries and/or psychology.

No matter what you have read about this story and choose to believe, as the saying goes, "the proof is in the pudding." I would like to point out that Morey Bernstein never once in his life said that this story was proof of reincarnation. Not even close. He said that it definitely warrants further invesigation into the phenomenon. At the time the book came out, the western world was against any idea of reincarnation as it flew in the face of western thinking (Although, lets take a look: hundreds of millions of people take reincarnation as a fact of life as part of their religion). The discreditors of the story never once found any way to show the story was a fraud. In fact, the discreditor happened to be a Chicago TABLOID!!! The women allegedly named Bridey Murphy who lived across the street upon further investigation turned out to be the mother of the TABLOID's owner. The person below me mentioned occum's razor (the simplest solution tend to be correct) Think about that. In fact, when a more credible Chicago paper picked up the TABLOID's story, it had to cut out a whole bunch of arguments because they were just way too outrageous. ex: When Ruth Simmons was a girl she had a park accross the street which she played in many times. This explains why she would have said she lived in "the meadow."
Now that is just ridiculous, especially when a hand-drawn 1800's map of the city Cork, the area in which Bridey lived according to Ruth's sessions was called "The meadow." Now Ruth, living in America her whole life, and having never even heard of the town called Cork, recalls an area of only a couple square miles in the 1800's in Ireland. None of this was made up. Everything Ruth said under hypnosis has been verified to be real and not a hoax. am i saying that reincarnation exists? After reading the book, i believe. But please, read the book and don't read anything trying to close your mind to one of the most amazing cases of age-regression hypnosis ever told.

I read this story at the age of 16. That was 15 years ago and it still has an impact of my belief system today. It changed my beliefs in religion. I loved the way it unlocked the realization that the universe is so wonderfully complex and profound. Even if the story is just that it is wonderful and holds a special place in my heart.

Kotler and Scheff have managed to write a textbook that is relevant, well-organized AND interesting! While the style is characteristically dry, the prose is peppered with plenty of real-life case studies that help elucidate both the marketing concepts themselves and the application thereof. The chapters are helpfully broken into sub-categories which makes for easy note-taking and comprehension. I can see why this has been the Arts Marketing bible for so long. The only thing we need is an updated version with more intense focus on internet marketing, etc.

This is a decent reference book if you have limited marketing experience. If you have any Graduate level marketing classes or marketing experience, you'll find it to be like the other Kotler books: stale and behind the times.

I found Standing Room only was useful as the recommended text for the Arts Management Post Graduate at UTS Sydney. It would be great for a new edition to be published that includes more recent marketing examples and methods, like e- business and contemporary arts organisations as it is really dated.

If you want to run an arts organization or run one now, or run part of one: have a long visit with this book. As an MBA who has interviewed many performing arts managers and worked as a performing arts funder and on various boards over decades, I commend this to all people in the business except my competitors.

It wouldn't be fair to compare this to other business how-to books because it is a compendium, not just management theories-du-jour. And perhaps because not-for-profits have a "spiritual" side, the reader senses that the authors are holding nothing back out of mercenary considerations. So if you suspect you don't know everything about running a performing arts organization, this is the place to start.

The book is a gift, a mission informed by the authors' love of and belief in the arts as inherently good. Just one idea gleaned here could save your organization, especially in times of funding and subscription-ticketing stress. While a revised edition might meld more internet ideas into the fantastic array of tips-'n-tools presented, as-is, "SRO" is exhaustive but not exhausting.

I've been in the entertainment public relations business for 30 years and this book is one of the best I've encountered. It's accurate, up to date, well-written and thorough.

I refute any negative claims about the content of this book. The strategies outlined in the book are viable and very profitable approaches. I know, I have adapted a couple of them to my own use. I am in the minority as a profitable futures day trader because as every trader knows, most traders lose. I also lost money in my first year trading futures. There is a steep learning curve in trading. Here is my message to any newcomers to futures trading. NEVER GIVE UP! This book is a wonderful place to begin your own futures research. For day trading, I have found the very unique support and resistance methods found in the book effective in the S+P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Euro. Get some charts. Apply the methods, oscillators and indicators for yourself. You will see how effective they are. Then begin your own research using Jake's ideas as a springboard. Yes, you can make a living trading futures. There is a whole lot of very expensive bull out there about futures trading. If you do not want to take my word for it, consider this. Larry Williams recommends reading all of Jake Bernstein's work. So do I.

The book is a VERY basic introduction to developing a trading system and is literally geared for the newbie who knows nothing. With that said, he introduces the fundamental aspects of developing a trading system (such as identifying specific levels of risk, stops, etc...). and the different types of systems (trend following, support resistance, breakout...). He even provides examples of back tested systems that work over the given time frame he has chosen. The problems with the book are that since it is for the beginner it should probably contain the code for easylanguage or metastock so one can become use to programming in an indicator, signal, then building a strategy. He does not even go over the math of most of the indicators. I guess he thinks if it works then the investor should not know anything else. So basically what you have is a book that describes indicators and systems that are already present on most testing software. For example, there is already a parabolic trading system on Tradestation. So why do you need the book? Because you are a beginner, and that is why I gave it 3 stars, for everyone else, I would give it one.

I read this book before I started trading futures. I played around with a few of the concepts and since then (end 1999) have written my own trading system based on some of the theories. I have gone through a steep learning curve but have now started to make money consistently in the futures market.

I would totally recommend the book for down to earth explanations on how to develop a profitable strategy.

This is my first exposure to a Jake Bernstein book and I've read many mixed things about him. Well, after reading most of this book .. I'm glad i now have my own opinions.

This book appears to be written for a total beginner futures trader lemming, just waiting to blow out their account. There is absolutely no substance in this book, nothing to be learned and filled with verbose junk about indicators, patterns and psychology -- typical in most books. Jake provides numerous so called "backtests" of various indicator settings with variable moving averages. Every single system has different settings - which is such an obvious sign of curve fitting. The only thing I saw of some value was the 3 period high and low moving averages to serve as channels of support and resistance .. which a trader may be able to modify into something usable, since Jake's version is taught improperly.

I checked this book out from the library and I still feel I got ripped off .. and it was free.

This book looks just like a compilation of the "author's" position trading books but with editing to put in the words "day trading" where "position trading" used to be. There's no other difference. The only potentially useful info to a newbie was about monitoring the first 30 minutes to try to determine the direction of the day. However, everyone has been doing that for years and most websites suggest it, without charging. Who doesn't know what an oscillator divergence is? That's not a system and while a valid indicator for some trading styles, is certainly not unique to day trading. Mr. Bernstein was reportedly run off tv with his infomercials that made claims the government stated he couldn't back up. Put his name in a search engine to see what others say about him. If you want to get your money's worth, read whatever Larry Williams' latest book is. He'll show you his brokerage records, Mr. Bernstein won't. 'Nuff said.

This is a very realistic view of prostitution that was written by the people who actually know about the industry, the prostitutes themselves. No socio/psycho-babble or theories by academic types who can only begin to imagine the reality of prostitution, which makes for a very good, easy read.

Way too much male homosexual stuff. Maybe that means there are more men paying men for sex these days. I don't know the answer to that question. I like the frankness of the writing and the psychology of the book, but I think I spent too much money for this one.

Matt Bernstein Sycamore has edited here some of the most useless (and possibly dangerous) advice for sex workers ever put between pages. His attitude (as in his recent novel "Pully Taffy") is frighteningly superficial and shallow. He doesn't appear to have a thought in his head about anything besides sex and drugs, and he seems to behave as if he'd never heard of AIDS. Being a sex worker is NOT a liberating experience. It's an act of desperation, often born out of a lifetime of abuse. For Sycamore to pretend otherwise is disingenuous at best. And for a supposedly legit publisher to put this thing out is absolutely irresponsible. This book does a disservice not only to the gay community, but also to those out there who would like to see an alternative to the pablum thrust upon us by the mainstream.

Tricks and Treats is insightful, entertaining, and open about the sex business. We are grateful that an author finally tackled the business of sex with such frankness and candor. We highly recommend it to everyone that is working to gain a clearer understanding of this booming business.

Very real expose of what happens in the sex industry. No ten dollars words to describe the gritty world of prostitution. You will have a good grasp of what goes on in the business. Highly recommended.

I especially like this book because Daryl Bernstein wrote this book when he was 15. His book is not only about his ideas but also his experiences as well.

* Gives tips on Supplies needed to start up your own business
* Suggests special strategies for each business to be succesful
* Easy reading

The author didn't really talk about everything..... In many states you need a food handler's permit to cook food to be consumed by other people, or even to serve it. Often you must cook it in a commercial kitchen. Most of these ideas wouldn't work, because you must have a great deal of talent or a very large amount of starting money, such as ideas like a store window painter, or a jewelry maker. Most people would rather hire professionals to actually get the work done, then to trust something to a kid. I'm 12 years old and I'm glad I did not buy this book at full price, but found it used at a thrift store.

I think that this is a very good book for parents to buy for their kids.
It's kids telling their stories and who better than kids to help kids.
There are lots of money making ideas for kids and there is stuff on how to advertise, business ideas that can make money, and overall quite an interesting book.
This book can be applied for all times.

I've been looking for a book like this for a very long time. We need more of these to be written because it's important for our kids to get involved.
Maybe more people should follow the author's lead and do some investigation into how we can get our kids to work at an earlier age.
There's another book that I also read that may be of interest to parents and kids alike.
It's called Untapped Wealth Discovered and it has some very potent ideas for parents and kids and it talks about how kids can make some very good money because large companies are seeking their expertise.
These companies include cereal companies, toy manufactuerers, and video games developers. The second edition in particular has some very good examples.
Thank you Barry for writing your book.

This book is full of great ideas that kids can really use to make money. For each business, there is information on what supplies you need, how much time it will take, how much to charge customers, how to advertise, plus Daryl give some special tips from his experiences.

Daryl was 15 years old when he wrote this, so he really knows what it's like for kids to start their own businesses. Right now I'm trying 2 of the ideas in the book, and I'm already making some money.

Once you read this book, you'll see why it's the most famous book about money-making ideas for kids. Daryl really tells you everything you need to know and motivates you to believe in yourself.

Magic By the Book
By Nina Bernstein
Illustrated by Bosis Kulikov

This will be a great book to add to my collection of magical adventures.
Ann, Emily and Will have a whole pile of books to read during the summer vacation.

There is one book that is left in the bottom of the basket. When they discover the book, and begin to read, it says that Ann and Emily had one book in the bottom of the basket that they just now discovered.

Everything they do is written into the pages of the book.
The children go on magical adventures into stories that they have read and loved. Ann and Emily go into the pages of Robin Hood. When they come back, they cannot turn the pages of the book and they are upset, wishing to go on another adventure.

The next adventure, it turns out, will be for their younger brother, Will alone.

All three children share an adventure into the book, War and Peace. Ann began reading the book, which was a little too grown-up for her. She didn't read the ending, so they aren't sure how their adventure will turn out.

If you are a fan of Edward Eager, you will enjoy this fun story. If you enjoy reading books about children going on magical adventures this book is for you.

Jill Ammon Vanderwood
Author of magical adventures
Through the Rug
Through The Rug: Follow That Dog (Through the Rug)

I've never been so glad to put a book down as when I finished this one. That is not a compliment.

"Magic by the Book" is very poorly put-together, and seems to be more of what a starry-eyed adult wishes to read about in a children's adventure, than an actual adventure intended for children.

The characters are very unconvincing. We are told that the three siblings, ages 11, 9 and 6, all love to read. Great! What do they like to read? "War and Peace", and other classics that are not only not intended for children, but are far above their reading and comprehension level, and most likely out of their areas of interest. They also seem to have encyclopedic knowledge of poems and ballads.

But I could handle that, I suppose, if not for their sheer precociousness. Their dialog shows an intelligence that is very unrealistic for children. The kids are at their best when they intelligently recognize things that children might be able to figure out on their own, such as when they wonder if their being trapped in a book could result in their actions changing the story's outcome. They're at their worst, however, when they understand adult concepts, use their large knowledge of books and ballads and poems to drop references, and act like little adults. In particular, when discussing strategy to carry out rescue operations, any ability to relate to these characters as children completely disappears. Especially when six-year-old Jack, who is described as being unable to read, does it. Nothing could kill suspension of disbelief quicker than having a not-yet-literate six-year-old suddenly start understadning situations that older kids might not readily recognize.

The "little adults" comparison isn't helped by the unappealing illustrations. The kids look like midgets! They have oddly shaped bodies and large heads with faces that do not look like children at all. The characters are so poorly drawn that one would have to wonder if it was intentional. Were the bad illustrations meant to evoke some sort of bizarre "old-fashioned" feel to the book? I sure hope not, since even old books have better illustrations than this.

The action is frequently stopped by excessive narrative and flashbacks. Constant flashbacks to earlier events in the kids' childhood are triggered by things that happen, but tend to bring the story to a grinding halt. This is especially bad when the flashback is not relevant to what's currently happening in the story. It almost feels like padding, along with the amount of detail put into little things such as the rituals of little Gnomblins and the little quirks of Robin Hood's gang. While such details could be interesting and help flesh the characters out, they are expanded upon in such a way that the flow of the story suffers.

It's a shame that so much could be so wrong with this book. The idea is pretty sound: three siblings end up getting sucked into a book that transports them into different adventures, each with a problem they are required to solve. There were even plot elements that I really liked too, such as when a mysterious man from the book steals the book to use it for his own ends. Unfortunately, all the bad buries the good and turns the whole thing into a painful, nearly unreadable mess.

If you happen to enjoy this book, more power to you. Though I have to wonder... are kids, or adults, its intended audience? Horrific illustrations, bad characterization and dialog, literary namedropping ("let's see what famous book I can reference next!"), mild swearing (!), and a narrative that frequently slows down and stops for no good reason, all have me wondering if this book was really intended for kids, or for adults who have a love of books and want to be brought back to them in some twisted misshapen attempt at nostalgia.

Though this is a book for older young readers, we have been reading it to our 6 year old nightly. The language is vivid and rich and a pleasure to read aloud. We happened to see this book showcased at our local library and deffo plan to purchase! This is a wonderful book that shows the promise of the magic of reading and using one's imagination to create the world being read from the page. Splendid!

Cheers!
Andie

Nina Bernstein's Magic By The Book is more than just a tribute to books and a powerful fantasy: it will remind readers of a more modern version of the classic Edward Eager 'magic' books which so thrilled a generation. Can a book cast a spell and make its readers travel through time? A simple library book brings three kids to explore magic in the printed word.

It's hard not to appreciate a book whose author clearly intends it to be a literary homage to some all-time favorite young fantasy authors: E. Nesbit, Edward Eager, Mary Norton, etc. And whether the tribute is subtle in terms of theme or visuals or plot or more directly stated, as when one of the characters references a book by the above mentioned authors, it is always done without a sense of irony--there's a sincere sense of love there.
Unfortunately, Bernstein didn't channel enough of those authors in her writing, as Magic by the Book falls woefully short of its models. The title book that mysteriously appears one day in a basket of library books, sweeps three young children (Anne, Emily, and Will) into its pages and into adventure. In the first, Anne and Emily meet Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest and help to avoid a major disaster. In the second, Will shrinks down in size and acts as battle champion/questor for the good inhabitants of his backyard garden, threatened by a nasty bug and his army of insects. And finally all three get swept into an alternate War and Peace and they try to save the book itself from some sort of wolfman.
The three set pieces vary in quality but none is particularly strong. The Robin Hood section feels a bit perfunctory and flat. Will's section is the most wildly inventive and by far the most engaging, but it lags somewhat by its end. And the last section feels almost insubstantial, not quite all there, as if it were rushed in to beat a deadline.
Will is the most alive of the three children, Emily the least so, and Anne falls somewhere in the middle. The last section offers a glimpse of stronger characterization with regard to Anne but just enough to tease and then finally disappoint as its never really fully explored or resolved. The children's speech patterns are somewhat inconsistent, seeming to shift between age-appropriate and more adult. The family dynamics among the three are nicely handled and are probably one of the book's strong points, though again more could have been done with them. And there's a nice focus on the power of reading.
One kept pulling for this book based on its obvious inspirations, but in the end it never came off as a choice companion to those other books or as its own standalone. If anything, it performs its tribute in untended fashion, showing just how rare, just how special, is the literary magic of those authors like Nesbit, Norton, and Eager. And thus the recommendation to try them rather than Magic by the Book.

Wow. Haven't had so much fun in ages. It took me right into what it must have been like in Hollywood back in the '50s - when stars were really STARS! Loved it.

Hollywood sex, scandal and ironies comes to life in MR. CONFIDENTIAL: THE MAN, HIS MAGAZINE & THE MOVIELAND MASSACRE THAT CHANGED HOLLYWOOD FOREVER, which tells of publisher Robert Harrison and his magazine Confidential, which changed the face of entertainment writing. From the impact of different kinds of stories and dramas to changing Hollywood personalities, MR. CONFIDENTIAL offers up an inside look into the industry that is required reading for any who would understand Hollywood's underlying influences.

As a fan of 1950s Hollywood, I enjoyed this book. Its comprehensive list of Confidential's mostly innocent "scoops" (Marilyn Monroe likes sex. Ava Gardner likes sex. Elvis signs womens' breasts if they ask him to and, by the way, he likes sex) is worth the price of admission alone. It also puts into perspective Confidential's role in the "outing" of celebrities like Tab Hunter and Liberace, a role which other books about the era often overdramatize.

Author Samuel Bernstein has a chatty, conversational style which fits the material well. But where, oh where, was his copy editor? He repeats himself, makes references to characters he hasn't yet introduced, and goes off on ill-timed and personal tangents. Any professional with a red pencil would have made this a better, tighter book.

As it is, this book is less like a serious piece of film history and more like having a juicy conversation with a film historian at a dinner party.

This is perhaps the most boring book I've read in some time. Nothing in it was worth my time.

I had hoped to read the story of the hectic, hysterical hunt for Hollywood sleaze. There's very little of that here. Instead of stories of private detectives and paid informants lurking in the shrubbery, we get a relatively bland biography of publisher Robert Harrison and his family. Fair warning: the final third of the book consists of reprints of magazine covers.

As usual, Garcia Marquez delivers. Serious social commentary - all of us know about folks who serve their country in wars, to live in poverty and neglect when they return home - but great story!

An excellent translation of Garcia Marques's short stories.
The work is exact word by word. Wish they publish the original in Spanish as well. As a student of Spanish literary, this work is a great help.

This is probably the worst book I hav ever read. It is true, it's very short but nothing changes in the story, you end the story the same way you beggin it-- the colonel is a dumb-stubborn old man, he does not have anything to eat and he just waits each week friday after friday for his pension, he doesn't sell the rooster, and practically nothing happens in the whole story.
A waste of time, if you want to read a sad story that really gets you down read "Things Fall Apart," by Chinua Achebe or any good holocaust narrative.
The last line of the story sums up everything.

a series of short stories from marquez that intrique the reader in the same sense his other novels have accomplished

The book and its popularity among a certain kind of readers in the erstwhile colonized third world countries explain a lot about those societies and their priorities and preferences. The colonel has been waiting for decades for a meagre pension while his friend Sabhas manages to accumulate some wealth by questionable means (how else,making profits!). If you have to like the book you have to read it as one identifying the difference between the good and the evil and no way between a lazy fatalistic person and the industrious in reality. If only one Gen. Aurlieno Buendia did not give up a certain kind of righteous fight, things would not have been so bad for the poor couple i.e. the colonel and his wife. The colonel was honest when it mattered (handed over a sum to Gen. Buendia faithfully), although a long time ago in his youth, and thus he very legitimately awaits a pension without looking for any alternative means of sustenance since then. He keeps pet, a rooster, which will fight when appropriate time arrives and that will be the second occasion when a fight may help the colonel in his life. In between, only poverty is the meaning and I am sure,to some readers of a certain kind of political grooming, glory of his life. The novel is competently written to dispense with the opiate of the daydreaming masses to whom revolutionary struggle (whatever that may mean) is the only magic to improve living. Those who will appreciate the novel will have to ask themselves why do they sympathize with the colonel - is it because he is poor,is it because he was once a fighter or is it because he does not show much interest in any form of income except pension at an early age. I think, of all those of his ilk, Marquez found the most effective style to move the fatalist romantics emotionally. And to them, emotion is only what matters.