bookpagedev

Mystery & SuspenseSuspense

A symphonic storytelling masterpiece

Review by bookpagedev

Reading a novel by Sharyn McCrumb is like listening to the movements of a symphony: separate themes are introduced, explored, and expounded upon, until they come together in a melodic whole. The insistent note McCrumb sounds in The Ballad of Frankie Silver is the story of a young woman who killed her husband, and the justice that awaited her in the town of Morganton, North Carolina, in 1833. It is a true history that relies on the novelist’s art to make the theme of poor defendant versus upper middle class society resonate for our times.

Sheriff Spencer Arrowood, recuperating from a gunshot wound, has been invited to attend the execution of a man whom he arrested for two gruesome murders in the 1970s. To pass the time until the state electrocutes convict Fate Harkryder, the sheriff delves into the case file of Frankie Silver, a 19th-century woman tried and hanged for killing her husband with an ax. The connections he draws between the two defendants lead Arrowood to question his judgment about the Harkryder case. By the time Arrowood discovers further evidence that may exonerate Harkryder, it is almost too late to plead for the prisoner’s life.

McCrumb’s subtle storyline passes back and forth in time, as Arrowood reads of Frankie Silver’s miserable destiny in the writings of a clerk of the court that convicted her in 1832. Unlike most modern mysteries, the plot does not rely on a pool of suspects to lead the reader with clues. Instead, the building suspense is driven by Arrowood’s initial curiosity and gradual obsession with Frankie’s case, an obsession we follow as the novel slips between the centuries. Without a hint of preachiness, McCrumb leads us to consider the terrible toll of domestic violence, the assumptions rich and poor make about one another, and the barbaric anachronism of the death penalty. It is to her credit that these solemn issues never get in the way of a good story.

Reading a novel by Sharyn McCrumb is like listening to the movements of a symphony: separate themes are introduced, explored, and expounded upon, until they come together in a melodic whole. The insistent note McCrumb sounds in The Ballad of Frankie Silver is the story…

Mystery & SuspenseMystery

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Patricia Cornwell is back with familiar friends and at her absolute best as a novelist. Though Cornwell has tried other literary pursuits, nothing succeeds like Dr. Kay Scarpetta and the cast of characters around her who make mystery reading pure pleasure.

Dr. Scarpetta is growing older as is everyone and her sometime lover, Benton Wesley, is grayer. Her niece Lucy has changed jobs after leaving the FBI and now works for the ATF. Her familiar sidekick, Peter Marino, is beefier, smokes heavily and sometimes ruffles Scarpetta’s feathers. Generally, they mirror the human condition.

For the uninitiated, Dr. Kay Scarpetta is the chief medical examiner for the commonwealth of Virginia. She is also a consultant to the FBI, often called in on cases that are extraordinarily baffling. This time she has a real puzzler. A fire burns down the house and horse barn of a prominent and wealthy man while he is away, destroying some very fine horses. There is also a dead blonde in the bathroom of the main house. With an onslaught of mysterious fires and deaths, Dr. Scarpetta is increasingly bewildered but keeps her cool, even in the midst of a very personal tragedy. Evidently, an audacious and cunning killer is on the loose, but finding and unmasking him sets this mystery apart from the ordinary. Cornwell’s mastery of suspense is notable, and Point of Origin is certainly no exception.

This is a superb choice for anyone’s summer reading but the odds are that some will find it difficult to put down while the day turns to night, and night to early morning. This is, as the saying goes, a page-turner that will keep the reader utterly enthralled, wondering what will happen next.

Reviewed by Lloyd Armour.

Patricia Cornwell is back with familiar friends and at her absolute best as a novelist. Though Cornwell has tried other literary pursuits, nothing succeeds like Dr. Kay Scarpetta and the cast of characters around her who make mystery reading pure pleasure.

Dr.…

Arts & Culture

Review

Review by bookpagedev

It’s a wonderful life Okay, usually we list only seven, but that’s because we used to be ignorant. Not anymore. The ancient world which includes every continent boasted many noteworthy sites and accomplishments. Dozens of them appear in The Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World, edited by Chris Scarre. The subtitle sums it up: The Great Monuments and How They Were Built. This book features lush photos of the ruins as they look now, alongside thoughtful reconstructions of how they appeared in their prime and how they were constructed.

Ancient rock drawings, diagrams, Roman aqueducts, Chinese canals, Incan roads, Herod’s artificial harbor at Caesarea, the giant Nazca drawings in the Peruvian desert they’re all here. From Stonehenge to Easter Island, the tour goes around the world and throughout history even prehistory.

It's a wonderful life Okay, usually we list only seven, but that's because we used to be ignorant. Not anymore. The ancient world which includes every continent boasted many noteworthy sites and accomplishments. Dozens of them appear in The Seventy Wonders of the Ancient World,…

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Rome in the Dark Ages: squalid, vulgar, ragged, former glory long gone. It’s a wonderful setting, rich in irony. As one raised in the seaport of Genova, in the shadow of medieval structures city gates, castle walls, ruined watchtowers I was fascinated by the tarnished splendor of a once-great empire and the intrigue within.

Alice Borchardt, Devoted, Beguiled, masterfully places the reader squarely amidst a Rome devastated by invasion, inflation, poverty, decadence, and religio-political squabbling. In this drab, open-sewer city, crass Gundabald and his stupid son Hugo have come to wine and wench away the last of their money. Amidst their decadence, they are to arrange a marriage for Regeane Gundabald’s niece, left in his “care” since the death of her mother. They hope to score big, since Regeane is distantly related to King Charlemagne.

Beautiful but coarse, given her barbarian background, Regeane is naive yet incredibly intuitive. She bears the burden of a supernatural gift that is more often a curse. Like her murdered father, Regeane is a shapeshifter woman by day and wolf by night and therefore also able to benefit from the wolf’s senses and instincts. Afraid of her lupine form, the louts Gundabald and Hugo keep Regeane collared in a cell, beating her into submission over and over. While the wolf can miraculously heal her physical injuries, her psyche is bruised and battered, and she believes herself the freak Gundabald accuses her of being.

On the few, brief occasions Regeane is able to escape the clutches of her hung-over relatives, she finds her freedom on the wooded hills of Campagna, learning about herself under the light of a sympathetic moon. It is during one such excursion that she becomes embroiled in the politics of Rome. Regeane’s subsequent betrothal to Maeniel, a barbarian lord who commands a key mountain pass, is caught up in the heart of the conflict between Pope Hadrian and the Lombards. Pope Hadrian himself sponsors the marriage, while the Lombards want Regeane dead. After a murder attempt made by a Lombard hireling, Regeane is rescued and sheltered and educated in love and sex by Lucilla, Rome’s foremost madam and procurer (whose mysterious connection to the pope becomes important to his enemies). Borchardt only falters when the narrative sags somewhat in the middle and by choosing to present several key scenes offstage. Otherwise, her tale of lycanthropy, papal politics, and romantic encounters blends as well as any of her lovingly cataloged Roman menus. High melodrama indeed, and heady reading. Reviewed by Bill Gagliani.

Rome in the Dark Ages: squalid, vulgar, ragged, former glory long gone. It's a wonderful setting, rich in irony. As one raised in the seaport of Genova, in the shadow of medieval structures city gates, castle walls, ruined watchtowers I was fascinated by the tarnished…

Business & Finance

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Cashing in, cashing out Lately it seems as though all my friends are either getting rich or grousing about not getting rich while everyone else is. With the stock market and the overall economy steaming through yet another year of almost obscene prosperity, many Americans are rolling in the dough while others try to figure out how to get a taste of it.

There are new books out for both sorts of people: those who want to make the best of the money they have, and those still struggling to build up a nest egg. This month’s featured books cover how to start investing in the future, how to pick hot stocks, which hot stocks to pick, and what to do with all that moolah after retirement.

Let’s start simply. In Wealth Happens One Day at a Time: 365 Days to a Brighter Financial Future (HarperBusiness, $19.95, 0887309828), Brooke M. Stephens offers a combination of advice, affirmations, and action to demystify the process of reaching financial security. Like Dave Ramsey and other authors who address the basics of creating personal wealth, Stephens tells readers they can gain greater control over their lives by getting control of money.

It’s only natural for some people to feel intimidated about all the flashy wealth on display these days. This book is a self-help course in overcoming financial intimidation. One day at a time, it will help readers master the concepts of saving and investing even as they master their own emotions about money. Its 365 mini-essays move from the simplest of topics to such complex issues as Roth IRAs and testamentary trusts all explained in a breezy style with plenty of enlightening anecdotes.

Wealth Happens is a valuable road-map to personal enrichment. If you or people you care about have been meaning to get control of finances but just haven’t figured out where to start this book may be the highest-yielding investment you ever make.

Graduates of Stephens’s tutorial in personal financial management can move on to the small time with Gene Walden’s The 100 Best Stocks to Own for Under $20 (Dearborn, $19.95, 0887309828). Not every stock on Walden’s list is a small company, but most are small enough to have stayed off the radar screens of Wall Street know-it-alls in recent years. The author has applied sophisticated technical analysis to screen through the more than 8,000 stocks trading at more than $20 a share, finding a final 100 that excelled by a broad range of performance measures.

Imagine the rewards that can come from taking risks. Somewhere out there is the next Microsoft, priced today as cheaply as Bill Gates’s fledgling company was in 1987. A $10,000 investment then would be worth $1 million now. Walden argues convincingly that small stocks have been the 20th century’s most lucrative form of investment, and he makes a compelling case that his 100 picks are the hottest performers in this hot category. At a time when the true value of many high-flying stocks is very much open to question, Walden’s research can help investors find the market’s hidden gems.

Global Bargain Hunting: The Investor’s Guide to Profits in Emerging Markets (Touchstone/Simon ∧ Schuster, $14, 068484808) traces another route to riches for intrepid investors. It’s true that the Asian financial crisis gave all emerging markets a bad name in 1998, soon after the first edition of this book came out, but the turmoil did nothing to shake the faith of authors Burton Malkiel and J.P. Mei in the less-developed world’s markets. Their new paperback edition incorporates the wisdom gained from the Asian experience and points stock-buyers toward the opportunities that abound in its wake.

Unlike Walden, Malkiel and Mei focus more on how to pick the right international stocks than on which stocks to pick. They devote plenty of attention to the pitfalls of investing in emerging markets, which range from high transaction costs to underdeveloped stock markets to corruption and even the risk of government expropriation. And they discuss which types of investment are and are not suitable for the typical individual buyer.

Like Walden, Global Bargain Hunting’s authors crunch numbers to reveal true values in the market that most investors could never discover on their own. You don’t have to be a math wizard to be persuaded by their valuation formulas, such as a calculation of domestic-growth-to-price/earnings ratios in ten nations that ranks the U.S., with its overheated stock market, dead last in investment values and Poland first. The message: Sell apple pie short; go long on kielbasa.

Malkiel and Mei explain complicated financial concepts in simple and clear language. They are admirably blunt about some of the dirty secrets of Wall Street, offering such insider warnings as: Initial public offerings of closed-end [mutual fund] shares are usually a rip-off. And, as Malkiel advocated (controversially at the time) in 1973’s A Random Walk Down Wall Street (6th edition 1996, W.W. Norton, $15.95, 0393315290), the authors tend to favor indexed funds over managed funds for international investors.

Global Bargain Hunting makes a strong case for buying into the developing world, even with all the financial hazards involved. Investors wary of buying at the top of the U.S. market will find this book a worthwhile form of armchair traveling.

So, suppose you profit from the advice of all three of these authors. Enjoy the warm, fuzzy feeling of success while you can, because what comes after it is the realization that you really have something to lose now. Margaret A. Malaspina wants to help you cope with your riches. Don’t Die Broke: How to Turn Your Retirement Savings Into Lasting Income (Bloomberg Press, $21.95, 1576600688) is Malaspina’s guide to a topic that Baby Boomers and others may not have thought about much as they squirreled away savings in 401(k) and IRA plans over the years: managing those accumulated, and often half-forgotten, assets before and during retirement.

Malaspina, who helped make fund manager Peter Lynch a superstar when she was a communications executive with Fidelity Investments, displays a thorough grasp of the wickedly arcane rules that govern retirement savings, especially when it comes time to start withdrawing them. Just as importantly, she finds ways to help ordinary readers understand those rules and what can happen when retirees inadvertently break them. The horror stories here, about incredibly damaging financial decisions made by smart people acting in good faith, will suffice to focus the minds of future retirees on what they have at stake.

Don’t Die Broke is not just for people approaching retirement age, either. Anyone, of any age, who inherits retirement-plan assets may face a bewildering series of choices, with little guidance from the IRS or the trustee holding the assets. Your heirs may wish you had died broke before it’s all over and, in fact, Malaspina contradicts her book’s title by offering sage advice on how to do just that. Effective estate planning, which may need to begin sooner in life than many would think, can shift enough assets out of an estate to avoid large tax burdens.

Malaspina’s work is important reading for any American who is saving for the future, because it hammers home the uncomfortable fact that just saving money is not enough. Every retirement account needs a game plan as well, and Don’t Die Broke will empower its readers to create solid strategies.

Briefly noted: Money, Greed, and Risk: Why Financial Crises and Crashes Happen, by Charles R. Morris, is a salutary reminder, in these heady times, of what can go wrong in the financial markets. Morris deftly surveys America’s two-century history of occasional busts, panics, and market hiccups, skewering the hubris almost always at the core of a financial disaster. In Succeeding Generations: Realizing the Dream of Families in Business (Harvard Business School Press, $35, 0875847420), Ivan Lansberg offers insightful case studies and astute analysis to guide parents, siblings, and other relatives through the tricky business of succession planning in a family company.

One of this month’s most intriguing works (remember, intrigue can have more than one meaning) is a former U.S. military spy’s primer on corporate espionage. Confidential: Uncover Your Competitor’s Secrets Legally and Quickly and Protect Your Own (HarperBusiness, $26, 006661984X), by John Nolan, provides chilling glimpses into the cloak-and-dagger world of finding out (and protecting) companies’ most valuable secrets.

And finally, aspiring tycoons can choose from among 50 potential role models in Lessons from the Top: The Search for America’s Best Business Leaders (Doubleday, $24.95, 0385493436 on sale August 17). Authors Thomas J. Neff and James M. Citrin, both executive search specialists, have finely honed their instincts for finding good leaders, and their chosen honchos sound off on life at the top in revealing interviews.

Journalist E. Thomas Wood is an editor with the Champs-Elysees.com family of European language-and-culture magazines.

Cashing in, cashing out Lately it seems as though all my friends are either getting rich or grousing about not getting rich while everyone else is. With the stock market and the overall economy steaming through yet another year of almost obscene prosperity, many Americans…

Review

Review by bookpagedev

In April, 1963, one of the most renowned and beloved physicists of all time gave a series of three remarkable lectures at the University of Washington. Now these never-before published-lectures are finally available in book form in The Meaning of It All. Richard Feynman is well appreciated for his contributions to 20th-century physics, but perhaps less well-known for his views on the complexities of religion, society, politics, and social issues. Here he expounds on these issues with his characteristic energy and intellectual vigor.

In the first of his lectures, entitled “The Uncertainty of Science,” Feynman postulates that uncertainty is likely a good thing, because it is the parent of all learning. That is, if you know the answer, or think you do, then you will no longer seek further knowledge about that particular subject. He questions the value of science, particularly in light of the horrific uses it has been put to, “Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value. Once in Hawaii I was taken to see a Buddhist temple. In the temple a man said, ÔI am going to tell you something that you will never forget.’ And then he said, ÔTo every man is given the key to the gates of heaven. The same key opens the gates of hell.'” In his second lecture, “The Uncertainty of Values,” Feynman looks at several of our closely held beliefs and shatters them. On education: “At some time people thought that the potential that people had was not developed because everyone was ignorant and that education was the solution to the problem, that if all people were educated, we could all perhaps be Voltaires. But it turns out that falsehood and evil can be taught as easily as good. Education is a great power, but it can work either way.” On war and peace: “Everybody dislikes war. Today our dream is that peace will be the solution. Without the expense of armaments, we can do whatever we want. And peace is a great tool for good or for evil. How will it be for evil? I don’t know. We will see, if we ever get peace.” In his third lecture, “This Unscientific Age,” Feynman begins by noting his happiness at being given the opportunity to develop his ideas over the course of three lectures. Then: “I found out that I had developed them slowly and carefully, and completely, in two. I have completely run out of organized ideas. . . . So, since I already contracted to give three lectures, the only thing I can do is to give this potpourri of uncomfortable feelings without having them very well organized . . .” And this he does, taking on such diverse topics as faith healing, flying saucers, politics, psychic phenomena, TV commercials, and desert real estate.

Richard Feynman is no longer with us, so it is a rare occasion indeed that we have the opportunity to take a fresh glimpse into the inner workings of one of the finest minds of our age. Don’t miss it.

Reviewed by Bruce Tierney.

In April, 1963, one of the most renowned and beloved physicists of all time gave a series of three remarkable lectures at the University of Washington. Now these never-before published-lectures are finally available in book form in The Meaning of It All. Richard Feynman is…

Review

Review by bookpagedev

A manifesto opens John R. Stilgoe’s new book, Outside Lies Magic. Thoreau would have been proud of it: “Get out now. Not just outside, but beyond the trap of the programmed electronic age so gently closing around so many people at the end of our century. Go outside, move deliberately, then relax, slow down, look around. Do not jog. Do not run . . . Walk. Stroll. Saunter . . . Explore.” Exploration is Stilgoe’s theme in this pithy, spirited, heartfelt little book. For what they reveal about his preoccupations, it’s worthwhile to list a couple of the author’s previous books Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb and Metropolitan Corridor: Railroads and the American Scene. Stilgoe is an explorer who knows full well that he doesn’t have to journey to Surinam for the exotic or to Luxor for history. Sometimes the fantastic is merely the prosaic viewed in a new light. Stilgoe is a master at providing that thoughtful light. By doing so he illuminates the everyday world most of us live in, the world of strip malls and highways and back yards. Stilgoe is Professor of Landscape History at Harvard, where he teaches what he calls the art of exploring. “Exploring as I teach it,” he writes, “depends heavily on understanding the pasts that swirl around any explorer of ordinary landscape.” Stilgoe describes storm drains and fire hydrants as touchable links with larger concepts the history of a community, of an era, still visible around us, fossilized in the furniture of everyday life. Early on, Stilgoe describes the focus on visual acuity, on standards and taste in everything from shrubbery to furniture, that once comprised much of a liberal education. As he sketches the idea’s demise in the early part of this century, the reader understands why so much of the modern American landscape despite money and materials to spare is so ugly and soulless. And how a revival of such notions on an individual basis (he isn’t optimist enough to imagine a society-wide metamorphosis) could improve individual lives and, ultimately, the social space we all share.

Stilgoe’s classes at Harvard, and this book, are designed to encourage the rarest of educational goals teaching the art of thinking for yourself. “Personal observations and encounters in the most ordinary of landscapes can and will raise questions and issues routinely avoided by programmed educational and entertainment authorities.” Anyone who reads this book will inevitably view the interstate service station, electric wires, the rural mailbox, even lawns and pigeons with a new perspective. Seeing the world around you, rather than floating through it like a robot, alerts the eyes, jolts the brain and challenges society. It’s ambitious and rewarding. It’s fun. “Whoever owns the real estate and its constituents, the explorer owns the landscape. And the explorer owns all the insights, all the magic that comes from looking.” And who are the explorers? You and I.

Reviewed by Michael Sims.

A manifesto opens John R. Stilgoe's new book, Outside Lies Magic. Thoreau would have been proud of it: "Get out now. Not just outside, but beyond the trap of the programmed electronic age so gently closing around so many people at the end of our…

Business & Finance

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Cashing in, cashing out Lately it seems as though all my friends are either getting rich or grousing about not getting rich while everyone else is. With the stock market and the overall economy steaming through yet another year of almost obscene prosperity, many Americans are rolling in the dough while others try to figure out how to get a taste of it.

There are new books out for both sorts of people: those who want to make the best of the money they have, and those still struggling to build up a nest egg. This month’s featured books cover how to start investing in the future, how to pick hot stocks, which hot stocks to pick, and what to do with all that moolah after retirement.

Let’s start simply. In Wealth Happens One Day at a Time: 365 Days to a Brighter Financial Future (HarperBusiness, $19.95, 0887309828), Brooke M. Stephens offers a combination of advice, affirmations, and action to demystify the process of reaching financial security. Like Dave Ramsey and other authors who address the basics of creating personal wealth, Stephens tells readers they can gain greater control over their lives by getting control of money.

It’s only natural for some people to feel intimidated about all the flashy wealth on display these days. This book is a self-help course in overcoming financial intimidation. One day at a time, it will help readers master the concepts of saving and investing even as they master their own emotions about money. Its 365 mini-essays move from the simplest of topics to such complex issues as Roth IRAs and testamentary trusts all explained in a breezy style with plenty of enlightening anecdotes.

Wealth Happens is a valuable road-map to personal enrichment. If you or people you care about have been meaning to get control of finances but just haven’t figured out where to start this book may be the highest-yielding investment you ever make.

Graduates of Stephens’s tutorial in personal financial management can move on to the small time with Gene Walden’s The 100 Best Stocks to Own for Under $20 (Dearborn, $19.95, 0887309828). Not every stock on Walden’s list is a small company, but most are small enough to have stayed off the radar screens of Wall Street know-it-alls in recent years. The author has applied sophisticated technical analysis to screen through the more than 8,000 stocks trading at more than $20 a share, finding a final 100 that excelled by a broad range of performance measures.

Imagine the rewards that can come from taking risks. Somewhere out there is the next Microsoft, priced today as cheaply as Bill Gates’s fledgling company was in 1987. A $10,000 investment then would be worth $1 million now. Walden argues convincingly that small stocks have been the 20th century’s most lucrative form of investment, and he makes a compelling case that his 100 picks are the hottest performers in this hot category. At a time when the true value of many high-flying stocks is very much open to question, Walden’s research can help investors find the market’s hidden gems.

Global Bargain Hunting: The Investor’s Guide to Profits in Emerging Markets (Touchstone/Simon &and Schuster, $14, 068484808) traces another route to riches for intrepid investors. It’s true that the Asian financial crisis gave all emerging markets a bad name in 1998, soon after the first edition of this book came out, but the turmoil did nothing to shake the faith of authors Burton Malkiel and J.P. Mei in the less-developed world’s markets. Their new paperback edition incorporates the wisdom gained from the Asian experience and points stock-buyers toward the opportunities that abound in its wake.

Unlike Walden, Malkiel and Mei focus more on how to pick the right international stocks than on which stocks to pick. They devote plenty of attention to the pitfalls of investing in emerging markets, which range from high transaction costs to underdeveloped stock markets to corruption and even the risk of government expropriation. And they discuss which types of investment are and are not suitable for the typical individual buyer.

Like Walden, Global Bargain Hunting’s authors crunch numbers to reveal true values in the market that most investors could never discover on their own. You don’t have to be a math wizard to be persuaded by their valuation formulas, such as a calculation of domestic-growth-to-price/earnings ratios in ten nations that ranks the U.S., with its overheated stock market, dead last in investment values and Poland first. The message: Sell apple pie short; go long on kielbasa.

Malkiel and Mei explain complicated financial concepts in simple and clear language. They are admirably blunt about some of the dirty secrets of Wall Street, offering such insider warnings as: Initial public offerings of closed-end [mutual fund] shares are usually a rip-off. And, as Malkiel advocated (controversially at the time) in 1973’s A Random Walk Down Wall Street (6th edition 1996, W.W. Norton, $15.95, 0393315290), the authors tend to favor indexed funds over managed funds for international investors.

Global Bargain Hunting makes a strong case for buying into the developing world, even with all the financial hazards involved. Investors wary of buying at the top of the U.S. market will find this book a worthwhile form of armchair traveling.

So, suppose you profit from the advice of all three of these authors. Enjoy the warm, fuzzy feeling of success while you can, because what comes after it is the realization that you really have something to lose now. Margaret A. Malaspina wants to help you cope with your riches. Don’t Die Broke: How to Turn Your Retirement Savings Into Lasting Income is Malaspina’s guide to a topic that Baby Boomers and others may not have thought about much as they squirreled away savings in 401(k) and IRA plans over the years: managing those accumulated, and often half-forgotten, assets before and during retirement.

Malaspina, who helped make fund manager Peter Lynch a superstar when she was a communications executive with Fidelity Investments, displays a thorough grasp of the wickedly arcane rules that govern retirement savings, especially when it comes time to start withdrawing them. Just as importantly, she finds ways to help ordinary readers understand those rules and what can happen when retirees inadvertently break them. The horror stories here, about incredibly damaging financial decisions made by smart people acting in good faith, will suffice to focus the minds of future retirees on what they have at stake.

Don’t Die Broke is not just for people approaching retirement age, either. Anyone, of any age, who inherits retirement-plan assets may face a bewildering series of choices, with little guidance from the IRS or the trustee holding the assets. Your heirs may wish you had died broke before it’s all over and, in fact, Malaspina contradicts her book’s title by offering sage advice on how to do just that. Effective estate planning, which may need to begin sooner in life than many would think, can shift enough assets out of an estate to avoid large tax burdens.

Malaspina’s work is important reading for any American who is saving for the future, because it hammers home the uncomfortable fact that just saving money is not enough. Every retirement account needs a game plan as well, and Don’t Die Broke will empower its readers to create solid strategies.

Briefly noted: Money, Greed, and Risk: Why Financial Crises and Crashes Happen, by Charles R. Morris (Times Books, $25, 0812931734), is a salutary reminder, in these heady times, of what can go wrong in the financial markets. Morris deftly surveys America’s two-century history of occasional busts, panics, and market hiccups, skewering the hubris almost always at the core of a financial disaster. In Succeeding Generations: Realizing the Dream of Families in Business (Harvard Business School Press, $35, 0875847420), Ivan Lansberg offers insightful case studies and astute analysis to guide parents, siblings, and other relatives through the tricky business of succession planning in a family company.

One of this month’s most intriguing works (remember, intrigue can have more than one meaning) is a former U.S. military spy’s primer on corporate espionage. Confidential: Uncover Your Competitor’s Secrets Legally and Quickly and Protect Your Own (HarperBusiness, $26, 006661984X), by John Nolan, provides chilling glimpses into the cloak-and-dagger world of finding out (and protecting) companies’ most valuable secrets.

And finally, aspiring tycoons can choose from among 50 potential role models in Lessons from the Top: The Search for America’s Best Business Leaders (Doubleday, $24.95, 0385493436 on sale August 17). Authors Thomas J. Neff and James M. Citrin, both executive search specialists, have finely honed their instincts for finding good leaders, and their chosen honchos sound off on life at the top in revealing interviews.

Journalist E. Thomas Wood is an editor with the Champs-Elysees.com family of European language-and-culture magazines.

Cashing in, cashing out Lately it seems as though all my friends are either getting rich or grousing about not getting rich while everyone else is. With the stock market and the overall economy steaming through yet another year of almost obscene prosperity, many Americans…
Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

A distinctly different alternative kind of future is depicted in The Innamorati by Midori Snyder. This fantasy novel establishes an alternative Renaissance movement centered in a fictitious Italian city called Labirinto. Four companions, the innamorati, band together in this land alive with magic and seek the great labyrinth which is at the heart of Labirinto. Their adventures are replete with mystery, comedy, and imagination as they follow their heart’s desire through the Maze. Reviewed by Larry D. Woods.

A distinctly different alternative kind of future is depicted in The Innamorati by Midori Snyder. This fantasy novel establishes an alternative Renaissance movement centered in a fictitious Italian city called Labirinto. Four companions, the innamorati, band together in this land alive with magic and seek…

Business & Finance

Review

Review by bookpagedev

Cashing in, cashing out Lately it seems as though all my friends are either getting rich or grousing about not getting rich while everyone else is. With the stock market and the overall economy steaming through yet another year of almost obscene prosperity, many Americans are rolling in the dough while others try to figure out how to get a taste of it.

There are new books out for both sorts of people: those who want to make the best of the money they have, and those still struggling to build up a nest egg. This month’s featured books cover how to start investing in the future, how to pick hot stocks, which hot stocks to pick, and what to do with all that moolah after retirement.

Let’s start simply. In Wealth Happens One Day at a Time: 365 Days to a Brighter Financial Future (HarperBusiness, $19.95, 0887309828), Brooke M. Stephens offers a combination of advice, affirmations, and action to demystify the process of reaching financial security. Like Dave Ramsey and other authors who address the basics of creating personal wealth, Stephens tells readers they can gain greater control over their lives by getting control of money.

It’s only natural for some people to feel intimidated about all the flashy wealth on display these days. This book is a self-help course in overcoming financial intimidation. One day at a time, it will help readers master the concepts of saving and investing even as they master their own emotions about money. Its 365 mini-essays move from the simplest of topics to such complex issues as Roth IRAs and testamentary trusts all explained in a breezy style with plenty of enlightening anecdotes.

Wealth Happens is a valuable road-map to personal enrichment. If you or people you care about have been meaning to get control of finances but just haven’t figured out where to start this book may be the highest-yielding investment you ever make.

Graduates of Stephens’s tutorial in personal financial management can move on to the small time with Gene Walden’s The 100 Best Stocks to Own for Under $20. Not every stock on Walden’s list is a small company, but most are small enough to have stayed off the radar screens of Wall Street know-it-alls in recent years. The author has applied sophisticated technical analysis to screen through the more than 8,000 stocks trading at more than $20 a share, finding a final 100 that excelled by a broad range of performance measures.

Imagine the rewards that can come from taking risks. Somewhere out there is the next Microsoft, priced today as cheaply as Bill Gates’s fledgling company was in 1987. A $10,000 investment then would be worth $1 million now. Walden argues convincingly that small stocks have been the 20th century’s most lucrative form of investment, and he makes a compelling case that his 100 picks are the hottest performers in this hot category. At a time when the true value of many high-flying stocks is very much open to question, Walden’s research can help investors find the market’s hidden gems.

Global Bargain Hunting: The Investor’s Guide to Profits in Emerging Markets (Touchstone/Simon ∧ Schuster, $14, 068484808) traces another route to riches for intrepid investors. It’s true that the Asian financial crisis gave all emerging markets a bad name in 1998, soon after the first edition of this book came out, but the turmoil did nothing to shake the faith of authors Burton Malkiel and J.P. Mei in the less-developed world’s markets. Their new paperback edition incorporates the wisdom gained from the Asian experience and points stock-buyers toward the opportunities that abound in its wake.

Unlike Walden, Malkiel and Mei focus more on how to pick the right international stocks than on which stocks to pick. They devote plenty of attention to the pitfalls of investing in emerging markets, which range from high transaction costs to underdeveloped stock markets to corruption and even the risk of government expropriation. And they discuss which types of investment are and are not suitable for the typical individual buyer.

Like Walden, Global Bargain Hunting’s authors crunch numbers to reveal true values in the market that most investors could never discover on their own. You don’t have to be a math wizard to be persuaded by their valuation formulas, such as a calculation of domestic-growth-to-price/earnings ratios in ten nations that ranks the U.S., with its overheated stock market, dead last in investment values and Poland first. The message: Sell apple pie short; go long on kielbasa.

Malkiel and Mei explain complicated financial concepts in simple and clear language. They are admirably blunt about some of the dirty secrets of Wall Street, offering such insider warnings as: Initial public offerings of closed-end [mutual fund] shares are usually a rip-off. And, as Malkiel advocated (controversially at the time) in 1973’s A Random Walk Down Wall Street (6th edition 1996, W.

W. Norton, $15.95, 0393315290), the authors tend to favor indexed funds over managed funds for international investors.

Global Bargain Hunting makes a strong case for buying into the developing world, even with all the financial hazards involved. Investors wary of buying at the top of the U.S. market will find this book a worthwhile form of armchair traveling.

So, suppose you profit from the advice of all three of these authors. Enjoy the warm, fuzzy feeling of success while you can, because what comes after it is the realization that you really have something to lose now. Margaret A. Malaspina wants to help you cope with your riches. Don’t Die Broke: How to Turn Your Retirement Savings Into Lasting Income (Bloomberg Press, $21.95, 1576600688) is Malaspina’s guide to a topic that Baby Boomers and others may not have thought about much as they squirreled away savings in 401(k) and IRA plans over the years: managing those accumulated, and often half-forgotten, assets before and during retirement.

Malaspina, who helped make fund manager Peter Lynch a superstar when she was a communications executive with Fidelity Investments, displays a thorough grasp of the wickedly arcane rules that govern retirement savings, especially when it comes time to start withdrawing them. Just as importantly, she finds ways to help ordinary readers understand those rules and what can happen when retirees inadvertently break them. The horror stories here, about incredibly damaging financial decisions made by smart people acting in good faith, will suffice to focus the minds of future retirees on what they have at stake.

Don’t Die Broke is not just for people approaching retirement age, either. Anyone, of any age, who inherits retirement-plan assets may face a bewildering series of choices, with little guidance from the IRS or the trustee holding the assets. Your heirs may wish you had died broke before it’s all over and, in fact, Malaspina contradicts her book’s title by offering sage advice on how to do just that. Effective estate planning, which may need to begin sooner in life than many would think, can shift enough assets out of an estate to avoid large tax burdens.

Malaspina’s work is important reading for any American who is saving for the future, because it hammers home the uncomfortable fact that just saving money is not enough. Every retirement account needs a game plan as well, and Don’t Die Broke will empower its readers to create solid strategies.

Briefly noted: Money, Greed, and Risk: Why Financial Crises and Crashes Happen, by Charles R. Morris (Times Books, $25, 0812931734), is a salutary reminder, in these heady times, of what can go wrong in the financial markets. Morris deftly surveys America’s two-century history of occasional busts, panics, and market hiccups, skewering the hubris almost always at the core of a financial disaster. In Succeeding Generations: Realizing the Dream of Families in Business (Harvard Business School Press, $35, 0875847420), Ivan Lansberg offers insightful case studies and astute analysis to guide parents, siblings, and other relatives through the tricky business of succession planning in a family company.

One of this month’s most intriguing works (remember, intrigue can have more than one meaning) is a former U.S. military spy’s primer on corporate espionage. Confidential: Uncover Your Competitor’s Secrets Legally and Quickly and Protect Your Own (HarperBusiness, $26, 006661984X), by John Nolan, provides chilling glimpses into the cloak-and-dagger world of finding out (and protecting) companies’ most valuable secrets.

And finally, aspiring tycoons can choose from among 50 potential role models in Lessons from the Top: The Search for America’s Best Business Leaders (Doubleday, $24.95, 0385493436 on sale August 17). Authors Thomas J. Neff and James M. Citrin, both executive search specialists, have finely honed their instincts for finding good leaders, and their chosen honchos sound off on life at the top in revealing interviews.

Journalist E. Thomas Wood is an editor with the Champs-Elysees.com family of European language-and-culture magazines.

Cashing in, cashing out Lately it seems as though all my friends are either getting rich or grousing about not getting rich while everyone else is. With the stock market and the overall economy steaming through yet another year of almost obscene prosperity, many Americans…

Travel

Review

Review by bookpagedev

James Dodson, best-selling author of Final Rounds: A Father, a Son, the Golf Journey of a Lifetime, takes to the road once again in his delightful new book, Faithful Travelers. This time, he invites readers along on a fly-fishing pilgrimage with his precocious 7-year-old daughter Maggie and aging retriever Amos, a search for “big trout and big answers” in waters from Vermont to Michigan to Wyoming. From the start of this warm, witty, and insightful book, it is obvious that Faithful Travelers is much more than an entertaining travelogue. At heart, it is a meditation on fatherhood and family life today, set against the Snake, San Juan, and other well-known fly-fishing rivers.

Facing an imminent divorce from his wife of ten years, Dodson sets out to make sense of the changing landscape of his life “a Wild West of unexpected dangers and ambushing emotions” for both himself and Maggie. The book’s most moving moments come as father and daughter struggle to deal with the grief, anger, and confusion caused by the break-up. “You swore to me that you and Mommy would never get a divorce,” cries his anguished daughter in one heartbreaking scene. “Don’t you remember that?” Dodson writes with engaging candor, and readers will empathize with him as he wistfully watches his daughter examine his wedding ring, fields questions about whether he plans to marry again, and grapples with the emotional scars of promises broken.

For all that, there is plenty of humor here. Dodson clearly enjoys his daughter’s company, and his portrayal of her adventures is both amusing and endearing. The indomitable Maggie writes letters to both Pocahontas and the President, hangs out with Hell’s Angels, and manages to stay comfortably ahead of her father in the Beatle Challenge, their made-up game of Fab Four music trivia.

The pair encounter many colorful characters in their wanderings, and Dodson’s ear for dialogue and eye for detail help bring them alive. He also introduces us to interesting people from his own past, including Saint Cecil, a bullnecked, white-haired “lefty preacher” who taught him to fly-cast by reciting Frost’s “Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Near the end of their journey, Dodson writes a long, heartfelt letter to his daughter containing the best wisdom he has to offer on life, love, and families. “Being with you like this has helped me laugh and figure out a few things,” Dodson writes. “That’s what families do, you know help each other laugh and figure out problems that sometimes seem to have no answer.” Readers will be glad that Dodson has allowed them to join his family on this remarkable trip.

Reviewed by Beth Duris.

James Dodson, best-selling author of Final Rounds: A Father, a Son, the Golf Journey of a Lifetime, takes to the road once again in his delightful new book, Faithful Travelers. This time, he invites readers along on a fly-fishing pilgrimage with his precocious 7-year-old daughter…

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

Review

Review by bookpagedev

A fantasy world is artfully described in Otherland by Tad Williams. This is a near future thriller in virtual reality. Otherland is a multi-dimensional universe built over decades by the most agile and creative cyberspace minds of the 21st century. It is the key to a universe of possibilities for the human race, but it is controlled by The Grail Brotherhood inhibiting a group of outsiders who intervened and now seek to return. To do so, much like Philip Jose Farmer’s World of Tiers novels, they must encounter and survive a series of strange worlds inhabited by exotic creations, alien powers, and carnivorous monsters.

Reviewed by Larry D. Woods.

A fantasy world is artfully described in Otherland by Tad Williams. This is a near future thriller in virtual reality. Otherland is a multi-dimensional universe built over decades by the most agile and creative cyberspace minds of the 21st century. It is the key to…

Business & Finance

Review

Review by bookpagedev

E’s a mystery Picture yourself hanging ten in the famed surf of Hawaii, enjoying a day of better-than-average waves, just having a totally tubular time. Now, imagine that the reason for the high surf is an incoming tropical storm and you missed the forecast this morning.

If that scenario seems gnawingly familiar, you’re probably one of millions of people all over this Web-woven world trying to make sense of the Internet’s impact on how we do business. For many, using the World Wide Web is not about carefree surfing any more. It’s about survival in an increasingly merciless electronic commerce (or e-commerce ) marketplace.

Our featured new books this month deal with the anxiety that corporate managers, employees, and entrepreneurs are all feeling as they come to terms with the necessity of mastering e-commerce and other online competencies. At enterprises of all sizes in all industries, hallways are abuzz with nervous conversations about the huge opportunities waiting to be exploited on the Web and about the harsh blows that competition will deal to those who fail to exploit it properly.

It’s inevitable that books about Web business would abound while it’s a hot topic. But one new title stands out as the most lucidly argued of any I have seen, with the broadest relevance to a wide range of business situations: Dead Ahead: The Web Dilemma and the New Rules of Business (Allworth Press, $24.95, 1581150334), by Laurie Windham with Jon Samsel.

This is a book about real life, at a time when businesses are being forced into making high-stakes commitments to an evolving paradigm. I know from firsthand experience how baffling, frustrating, and even frightening it can be to decide how and where a company will make its early Web investments. It’s easy to tell that the rules of business are indeed new, but it can be vexing to figure out how they apply in one’s own case.

Windham, a San Francisco consultant, cuts to the core issues that business strategists need to focus on after they get past the initial acceptance of the Web as an inevitable part of their future. Windham guides the reader toward an understanding of how the Web reshapes nearly every aspect of business, from management structure to the most basic marketing premises to the new ways companies must approach their capital needs in the wired world and beyond. Dead Ahead is a first-rate prop to bolster the confidence of reluctant cybernauts.

Jonathan Ezor takes on many of the same issues in Clicking Through: A Survival Guide for Bringing Your Company Online (Bloomberg Press, $19.95, 1576600734). Offering an attorney’s perspective but also an entrepreneur’s mind-set, lawyer and columnist Ezor sets out a primer to help small businesses cope with the dangers inherent in Web-based business.

Those risks, as he makes clear, are both legal and tactical. It’s as easy to infringe someone else’s copyright inadvertently online as it is for someone else to poach your own. There’s a world’s worth of law and regulation that even a well-meaning Web site can transgress. Questions can arise about just who owns the material your company pays Web developers to create. The devil lurks in the details of contracts with technology vendors such as Web hosts, and the other party to the contract may be the only one with a full knowledge of those details. Ezor provides sound counsel on what questions to ask and what points really matter in negotiating with all the parties involved in weaving a Web presence.

Clicking Through is about opportunity as well as risk. But its warnings and suggestions concerning the things that can go wrong in e-business are sobering words of wisdom for companies about to fly enthusiastically into the enticing Web. This book will empower businesses to manage their online risks intelligently so that they can pursue online opportunities without fear of the unknown.

In The E-Commerce Book: Building the E-Empire (Academic Press, $39.95, 0124211607), authors Steffano Korper and Juanita Ellis convey a deep understanding of Internet applications in business. That’s hardly a surprise, since these information technology experts and educators have been working at the cutting edge of online business since the very Stone Age of the World Wide Web way back in 1994.

Would-be e-emperors will find this guide to empire-building as comprehensive as they could possibly hope for and will find plenty of inspiration as well. Lest anyone doubt the vigor of the Web marketplace, the authors sketch out its potential in terms that will convert all doubters. Maybe the figure of $2.2 trillion in worldwide e-commerce activity by 2003 is just too large to digest, so let’s look at some smaller numbers from the book. Number of years it took for use of the automobile to spread to one quarter of the population: 55. For the telephone: 35 years. For the Internet: 7 years. Message delivered: This new medium is catching on at lightning speed, and if your company doesn’t reach its customers through the Web, your competitors will.

Korper and Ellis approach e-commerce from a technologist’s point of view though, as the books mentioned above make clear, online business makes techies of everyone in the office, stripping the old high priests from the MIS department of much of their mystical power, but also leaving behind anyone who fails to master the basics of Internet technologies. It’s fortunate that these writers have a gift for gently acquainting the intimidated novice with the rapidly evolving tech phenomena that may well shape his or her future, from XML language to EDI connectivity to asymmetric key encryption.

Despite its attention to high-tech topics, The E-Commerce Book is a big-picture view of the Web’s brave new world. For any business leader trying to get e-commerce right the first time, this title will be an indispensable resource.

Our fourth book doesn’t present itself as another work about the Internet, but the very fact that Web applications are so central to its strategic vision makes it an important volume for business people coming to grips with the new online economy. Steven Wheeler and Evan Hirsch, authors of Channel Champions: How Leading Companies Build New Strategies to Serve Customers (Jossey-Bass, $35, 0787950343), are consultants with Booz-Allen and Hamilton, who cast a laser focus on one of the ultimate goals of all business efforts, online and otherwise: building a connection with the people who buy a company’s products and services.

Channel Champions is the book to pick up in the quiet moments of the morning before you boot up and begin your hectic online business day. Its core premise is refreshingly simple: Good businesses build good channels and tend them with loving care. A channel is simply a means of reaching the customer. Channels, Wheeler and Hirsch argue, have always been with us; a 5-and-10 store is (or was) one form of channel, a big-box superstore is another, and a virtual store that exists only online is another.

Obviously, channels are changing these days. Unintended consequences can result. Channels that worked for the decade preceding last Thursday may not work come Tuesday. The Web channel can fail to reach key customers, and it can eat into traditional sales channels. The authors guide the reader through these shoals by showing how the world’s best companies have channeled successfully how Wilsonart built a distributor network that delivers on its promise to deliver kitchen counters within ten days to anywhere in the U.S., how Saturn sells a transportation service to beat out rivals who just sell cars, how Dell dominates personal computer sales by selling directly to customers.

Briefly noted: Michael Lewis, of Liar’s Poker fame, has written the most engaging and dramatic business book of the year: The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (W.

W. Norton, $25.95, 0393048136; Nova Audio Books, $17.95, 1567408567). Lewis plays Boswell to one of the wild sages of our era, Netscape founder Jim Clark, intrepidly riding along as the entrepreneur tries to launch a health care technology company and the world’s most computerized yacht simultaneously.

U.C.L.A. Professor Richard Rosecrance surveys the increasingly integrated global economy in The Rise of the Virtual State: Wealth and Power in the Coming Century. Rosecrance draws analogies from the experiences of great and lesser national powers, going back hundreds of years to buttress his argument that we are literally on the verge of entering a new world: a universe where traditional measures of national might have no meaning and where a country’s most valuable resources are often the least tangible ones.

The Biology of Business: Decoding the Natural Laws of Enterprise (Jossey-Bass, $28.50, 078794324X) presents a radical new management theory, set out in essays by editor John H. Clippinger and nine other contributors. Borrowing principles from scientific thinking, the authors postulate a thought-provoking new approach to running organizations as complex adaptive systems. Journalist E. Thomas Wood is an editor with the Champs-Elysees.com family of European language-and-culture products.

E's a mystery Picture yourself hanging ten in the famed surf of Hawaii, enjoying a day of better-than-average waves, just having a totally tubular time. Now, imagine that the reason for the high surf is an incoming tropical storm and you missed the forecast this…

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