Foreign-market Books

For pete's sake, buy the Larousse Concise French-English, it's like ten bucks or cheaper used, but get the modern one, with the red and blue covers, unless you're a linguistics student or have some other pressing reason. The Lr. Concise is a terrific dictionary in large part because it can translate modern obscure French abbreviations like "SDF" (sans domicile fixée=homeless) and other things American-based bilinguals don't catch--Larousse is one of the two principal French dictionary publishers.
And once you can read French, splurge on the Le Petit Larousse Illustré, it's sort of a cross between a dictionary and an encyclopedia, with awesome illustrations and maps.
But don't get this...

Quite what I should have expected. I have't purchased too many things on-line in the past, but I must have missed some fine print. I thought the disclosed retail price of the book was like 5.00, so I felt I was getting a deal. The book was printed in the 1940's and it's original cover price was 49 cents. I'm slightly perturbed, but I'm using the book in school nevertheless.

Larousse's French-Engligh English-French Dictionary has met all my translating needs in my first two years of French; however, I'm starting to see and use words and idioms not in the dictionary. If you're looking for a portable, catch-almost-all dictionary, this is it. If you're studying French for the long haul and are looking for a desk reference, try the Concise edition.

I still have not received the version of Carmen that was stated in the description. I've received the French version the first time and returned it for the English version after speaking with customer service. Now I've received the French version again. I'm tired of returning it to the post office for return shipping. I give up.

I was looking for an English translation of this French classic. The description said it was in English, so you can imagine my frustration when it arrived and I saw it was all in French!! I already had a copy in French!

Oh, well...

As an IT professional who needed to master many facets of foreign exchange rather quickly, I found this book to be helpful in gaining an ear for the terminology and basic concepts, as well as basic jargon of traders. This book might be best used as a companion to a course on the same subject, as it might give you an alternate explanation of the same subjects.

The book will certainly not help you to Master the FX & Currency Options : It is just a collection of articles by various people - it offers not many insights and does not help you to understand the nitty gritties : in fact I felt that a novice like me could also collect information from a number of sources and cook it up into a book of my own. In short a waste of money and time... sorry to have to say this !

This is yet another book -a fairly decent one - that explains the instruments that can be used in exchange rate trading. The title and book blurb though promise more - I bought the book thinking it would provide more on general principles of arbitrage, hedging and speculation. It does have some useful stuff on these issues but we would have been better served by more. This is a book at an intermediate level.

The pale rider death stalks these two related romances of an Indian ( Native American Princess) maid's loving and her lover
and of Rene , the Frenchman fleeing his sins to the sentimental ends of the earth and somehow in the end he finds a measure of peace.
The great poetry in French prose needs a better English translation?
Here it just tended to be boring.
I hear deep oboe notes... long and deep and sad for love.
And as in a Shakespeare play, they sigh as long for love as a Cyrano without a sword.

This book is okay if you already have a REAL Japanese-English Dictionary. I borrowed this one from the library just because they had nothing else and its horrible. its not very clear in grammar. Its uses romanji. Revised in '93 Its no surprise its outdated. But it just doesn't have enough words. I understand the term 'pocket' but this is supposed to be a real dictionary. I can look up little words like 'kokoro' (heart) and particles but for the most part its not a very good one -and-only dictionary. So personally, I don't like it. You may, but still I suggest the Random House Japanese-English dictionary. Not this one.

This dictionary came packaged with an audio Italian language course. Having brought it along on several trips to Italy, I've found it to be inadequate. The range of words defined in this volume is limited, and many common words have been omitted altogether. My advice - pick up a better one, such as the Langenscheidt or Larousse.

I was looking for a basic book teaching the concepts and trading practices and fundamentals. This book has a lot to say about none of the topics needed to help someone become a trader. If you are looking to have someone trade your account you might be helped by it. There are a lot better books out there "Getting Started in Currency Trading" is a fine example. This is the best buy for the money when you are done reading it you will be much better informed to move ahead. Getting Started in Currency Trading: Winning in Todays Hottest Marketplace (Getting Started In.....)

As others have said clearly, this book is a waste of trees, ink and the time of its reader. The "authors" should be ashamed of such blatant hucksterism and poor description of even the most basic aspects of trading. Even if you are a neophyte, look somewhere else.

Well when i grow up i to be Russell R Wasendorf, whether sr. or jr. I think these two are the greatest salesmen around. I bought a wonderful book which adorns my bookcase and adds colour and life to my room. Whats more is that i found the same book in my brother's home. Thinking he 'borrowed' it I asked him, He replied saying he 'invested' in it and it works well as a sleep aide . Seriously some points for beginners are reasonably covered but most of the book was a waste of time, paper and resources. There were no Fine points covered in the book to memory but if there were it was lost in the dribble.

I'll summarize this book for you -- "Foreign Currency Trading is difficult, if you want to learn more, send us some more money and we will enroll you in a class."

Save your money, buy yourself a newspaper instead.

... I have no idea what objective these guys had in mind when they sat down to write this book.... This book is just a bunch of information thrown together (probably downloaded from the internet) and they obviously took no time to put any real effort into this book. I was terribly dissappointed with my purchase of this book.....look elsewhere if you are interested in getting started in forex trading.

The author spends way too much time explaining basic economic indicators that should be basic knowledge for any investor. After I read another review that outlined the blundering editorial mistakes, I had to see for myself. All true! I cannot continue reading this text... How can anyone who makes this many conspicuous mistakes get a book deal much less be right about anything? Not worth the $70 price tag!

As the author of the book "Futures For Small Speculators" I tend to be very critical of books that discuss my industry. Although this book had a few editorial mistakes, Mr.Gotthelf still did a solid job of getting his point across. For a beginner this is a great start. For more indepth analysis I would go to Mr. Cornelius Luca's books.

How else to explain that banks are brought down not by "rogue" traders but rather by "rouge" traders - is there a secret market for cosmetics derivatives? - that Switzerland has adopted the Euro, that a chart is described as listing a gain from 93 to 97 but only shows a gain of 93 to 95 etc., etc., etc ad nauseam.

In my eyes, this book is so pathetic that it is only a slight exaggeration to suggest that all those involved in the creation of this book should never be allowed to touch paper and pencil again.

In theory the concept of parity is belieivable.But to implement it I guess one would need some really sophisticated tool and the book is not a practical guide to implement his concept. Even though book needs serious editing, someone academically inclined may find this book interesting.

It appears that Gotthelf dictated much of this book into a tape recorder, some far-away typist created the manuscript, and nobody bothered to read or edit the final result. How else to explain that "Jim Ellis is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Oracle" on p.43 (I thought it was Larry Ellison)? These sorts of editorial lapses are rife throughout the book.

To name but a few examples, Fig 6.5 caption says "Cash Currency trading screen" but it's actually a bar chart of Yen futures (p.124)

The data for Figure 8.11 (a perpetual contracts bar chart of Yen) is presented with the caption of Figure 8.10 ("Soybeans futures monthly chart"). No soybeans chart is presented at all; instead, a Nikkei futures chart mysteriously appears (p. 212)

Figure 8.41 is printed upside down! (p.236). Honestly. This is perhaps the ultimate insult to the reader and ought to be a source of acute embarrassment to the editor and author.

Academy Award nominee James Caan, with two a's, will be amused to read p. 89 which states "... has been depicted in fiction such as the movie Rollerball starring James Cann" with two n's.

Those who buy the book believing it may deliver on the dustjacket's promise "How to trade the world's biggest market" will receive a disappointment. The only trading strategy Gotthelf reveals is "Go Long when price crosses above a moving average, Go Short when price crosses below a moving average." Then he regurgitates standard methods of creating a synthetic position using options. There is absolutely nothing new here.

No review would be complete without mentioning Gotthelf's mysterious concept of Parity. First he tells you it's "a ratio that always equals one" (page 24). Next he tells you "there are no exact relationships" in FOREX (page 32), leaving you to wonder how Parity could always equal one if there are no exact relationships. Then he muddles through two hundred more pages and eventually you, the reader, decode the fact (which Gotthelf never bothers to state exactly) that his "Parity" actually means "Equilibrium". Great. But where's the insight?

I own several other Wiley Finance books and all of them have wonderful quotes from important figures in the trading world, in the form of testimonials and gushing recommendations on the rear dustjacket. Kaufman's "Trading Systems and Methods" has five, Hill and Pruitt's "The Ultimate Trading Guide" has four, Ryan Jones's "The Trading Game" has five, Sweeney's "Maximum Adverse Excursion" has three, et cetera ad nauseum. But this currency book by Gotthelf has exactly zero quotes on the dustjacket. No recommendations, no congratulations, no endorsements. I suggest you follow the advice of everyone who DIDN'T write a recommendation for Gotthelf's book: stay away.

I don't find this dictionary even adequate. I spend more time having to get up and use my large hardback german dictionary kept across the room. This dictionary is missing even basic words. For example "fertig" and all its derivatives---not to be found. I'd say 2 out of 3 normal words I look up are not to be found. I'm throwing it away after I log out.

As other reviewers have mentioned, the most annoying problem with this dictionary is its limited vocabulary. The cover boasts 30,000 vocabulary entries, but they are most certainly not sufficient for anyone who wishes to communicate successfully in German. It is designed to be easy-to-read, with larger-than-normal print and plenty of white space, but I rather wish they had made the text a couple of sizes smaller and filled the extra space with useful vocabulary. It's also rather silly to give childish phonetic pronunciations for every word in the dictionary, since German is, in most cases, very phonetic and easy to pronounce in the first place. Conspicuously absent is some sort of section on irregular verb conjugation, such as can be found in many other similar dictionaries.

This German-English dictionary has a substansial number of entries, however there are several areas where the dictionary is lacking in structure. There are many words which are only shown in one form, without additional conjugation. This makes it difficult to locate a word if you do not know the root word. I was dissapointed that this reference did not include many idioms and phrases which are useful in conversational German. The dictionary also lacks some of the newer technological entries, and does not specify when words are used by a particular field (medical, legal, scientific term, etc.)This dictionary is good for the occasional speaker of German to use as a reference book. However, for students of German or for those wishing to learn the language, this dictionary is not a complete enough reference source. After purchasing this book and becoming frustrated with its limitations, I donated it to my local library. I then bought Langenscheidt's yellow-cover Pocket German Dictionary, which I am very pleased with and would highly recommend.

I bought this dictionary for the express purpose of helping me (before I gain proficiency in German) read philosophical discourses which make use of untranslated words in German (these are very common). Sadly, this dictionary seems to have none of the words that I've needed. Even the simplest of expressions, like the Erlebnis, are wholly absent from this dictionary (as far as I can tell... unless this dictionary has a "secret compartment" where all its more useful words are waiting, somewhere beyond the ken of those of us trapped in a merely phenomenological existence...)

Perhaps it's useful for people who want quick reference while travelling through Germany... however I have doubts even about this as (in the English section) I couldn't even find words that I KNOW exist, like the equivalent of "good bye"...

In sort- it's frustrating. But maybe there are SOME that could make use of it, and so (since I'm a charitable sort) I'll give it 2 stars instead of 1...

This dictionary, though simple to use, is missing far too many necessary words to be of any use to even a beginning student of German. I showed the book to my German teacher, and he advised throwing it away.