Fund-of-funds Books

I just loved Mr. Lux's book about Wall Street and how it takes advantage of people without their knowing. Now, I know why I won't invest in mutual funds again!! The book will be of great help throughout my life. Thank you Ted!!!

Mr. Lux exposes the little talked about secret wall street doesn't want you to know about. This book could save you thousands of dollars in hidden costs your mutual fund company is taking from you. ...

The book by Ted Lux is an insightful journey into the industry of investing. In his book,the author outlines ways to manage your own portfolio without spending a great deal of time and avoiding the expense and bias of the middle man-your local stock broker or mutual fund company. With more and more funds now charging loads to purchase their fund,this book is quite timely. I urge those who have an interest in saving money and investing to read this book. You will be glad you did.

This book by 'The Foundation Center' is indespensible for those interested in forming a nonprofit as well as current Directors who wish to have a reference guide on current developments in the structure and dynamics of modern nonprofits. There is a wealth of information in this book, and I rate it a 'Must Read.'

The substantial revised and thoroughly updated fourth edition of The Foundation Center's Guide To Proposal Writing from the Foundation Center by fund raising expert Jane C. Geever is an authoritative guide to the basics of proposal writing in order to secure funding for any kind of project or study. Featuring pre-proposal planning tips, components of the proposal, and guidance from grantmakers, The Foundation Center's Guide To Proposal Writing delves deeply into a comprehensive and "user-friendly" reference for grantmaking, decision making, and significant strategies for successfully compiling and shaping proposal formats and requests. The Foundation Center's Guide To Proposal Writing is very strongly recommended for anyone requiring a complete and thorough instructional guide through the evaluation process and writing skills for grant applications and funding proposals.

Be sure to know that there is a third edition (2001) available from the Foundation Center

This is a monumental work, which I think is a must have for student of jurisprudence and constitutional law. I found it incredibly useful as a law student in studying the debates and understanding developments in the common law tradition and constitutional history since the inception of the Republic. It is well organized, and though their is some duplication of materials, it serves the purpose of making the reference more accessible and user-friendly rather than having a cross-referencing scheme. Perhaps, the other user might be right in pointing out that the CD-ROM might be better suited for some users. I have an affinity for the printed matter and the organization makes things relatively easy to find. Though, it is available online for free.

This 5-volume set is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the historical context of the U.S. Constitution. The editors have divided the Constitution up clause by clause. For each section they provide primary, explanatory materials such as letters, records of debates, and early case law. These resources reveal what the writers of the Constitution intended with the language they chose and how that langauge was orginally interpreted. The editors also provide interesting materials on early English law, showing the legal backdrop the Founders worked against.

For example, I found interesting the books' treatment of the second amendment's protection of weapons ownership. The volume provides the early English history of gun control, debates from the Constitutional convention on the proper role for militias, and reports from the earliest litigation on the right to carry concealed weapons.

The wisdom of our Founding Fathers -- collected in these five volumes -- helps inform modern debates on the many subjects that have roots in the words of the Constitution. Highly recommended.

The Title is The Founder's Constitution. I have Vol. 1, Major Themes. 700 pages, about the size of a telephone book. Good heavy paper, very readable type, excellent organization and presentation. But how to give a sense of it? It starts with A Reader's Advisory: "This collection of thoughts, opinions, and arguments of the Founders...." And that is exactly what it is. I think the latest item is Geo. Washington's farewell speech in 1796. It includes letters, debates, broadsides, underpinnings (e.g., a bit of John Locke), reports from towns that debated, and so on. The compleat usual cast of characters is present, but also everyone else who spoke or wrote on it intelligently - and passionately. This is not about the writing of the Constitution; for that there is Madison's Notes (ISBN 0-393-30405-1). This book is a record of the debate that made it our Constitution. Not "about" it, but the debate itself, the entries mostly from the 1700s, but including some relevant earlier commentary. Idiosyncratic spelling and expression is preserved.

That's what the book is. The experience of the book is something else. It is nothing less than an encounter with the American mind of the 1700s, on matters that they understood better than we were of the greatest moment. By encounter I do not mean mere meeting as if in a modern classroom with texts and a professor, or as when one reads a single document or history book. Rather, one enters the immediacy of the debate and hears their voices as if spoken directly to the reader himself. And, of course, in a sense they were.

It is also an amazing record of the quality of that mind, its sheer intelligence, and its responsible, ethical, and moral engagement with the constitution itself and all the issues that swirled around it.

It has to said: we modern readers do not fare well at all in comparison. But one feels total pride of association with a community, a nation, capable of such quality of thought and discussion.

As a source, the book is literally priceless, a collection of libraries in one volume.

But it also has to be said that the style of 1700s America is not our style: it's a hard read, perhaps best read and savored over years.

I bought the set of 12 Foxfire books and I have not read them all yet, but what I have read is excellent. These high school kids have done an amazing job putting together histories, how-to's, and interviews. What a great project for them and all of us. This information could have been lost forever.

To start, pay no attention to Publisher's Weekly when the whine about the repeativeness of the Foxfire books. The reviewer obviously has not read all the books. I own, read and use almost all of the Foxfire books. Actually, we owe both the Foxfire people and we certainly owe the characters of a gone generation. This work, Volume 12, is indeed like the others. That is a good thing! A wonderful history of how it was. In this day and age of having most needs meet and something for everyone on the Wal-mart shelf, we tend to forget just what it was like in our not too distant past. These books, the Foxfire books, brings to light skills, attitudes and a way of life that is all but forgotten. Do be warned though, as one reviewer has pointed out, these are not step by step "how to do it" books. But This is sort a good thing as the how to books out there are sort of a dime a dozen any more. When a people lose their history, they lose part of their soul. As the title of this work states, this addresses many of the old forgotten skills and there is so much more. The editors have done a wonderful job. They have made a very honest effort to replicate the dialect of those places and times and I feel that this is a big part of the charm of these books. I am old enough to have known many of the kinds of folks featured in these books, being only one generation past them, and have a great appreciation for what and how they did all the little things we take so for granted now. I might also suggest that you actually try some of the things mentioned in these volumes. It will give you even more of an appreciation for what they did, and hey, who knows, the skill you develope just might come in handy one of these days! This particular volume also includes some great interviews with the decendants of Cherokees who, after all, were the original owners of most of the land involved here. These interviews are priceless. Recommend this and the other Foxfire books highly.

I have the entire series, plus the AUNT AIRE "special". I consider them all treasures. The way theu came about and still do, the subjects covered and in such detail too. There are 12 plus the special extra and they are all equel in value to me. To my knowledge, they are the most readily available to the public and a source of old Appalachian ways describing them in great detail.

An excellent history of the Appalachian Mountain folks. You will come away with a whole new perspective on the intelligence and ingenuity and the perseverance of the people who populated the Appalachians. If you are getting tired of all of the talking heads on tv and radio turn to the Foxfire series for some inspiration and hobby ideas.

Being a native of rural Appalachia, we owe so much to Mr. Wiggington for the preservation of our culture. No other, in my knowledge has done so much. The entire seires of Foxfire books is a tribute to the plain, industrious, pragmatic, proud mountain ways that I so fondly recall from my childhood. Whether you are doing research, or simply trying to remember how granddaddy did it, these books are an excellent source of knowledge.

This work, Volume IV, is like the others. A wonderful history of how it was. In this day and age of having most needs meet and something for everyone on the Wal-mart shelf, we tend to forget just what it was like in our not too distant past. These books, the Foxfire books, brings to light skills, attitudes and a way of life that is all but forgotten. This is a good thing. When a people lose their history, they lose part of their soul. As the title of this work states, from fiddle making to horse trading, this addresses many of the old forgotten skills and there is so much more. The editors have done a wonderful job. They have made a very honest effort to replicate the dialect of those places and times and I feel that this is a big part of the charm of these books. I am old enough to have known many of the kinds of folks featured in these books, being only one generation past them, and have a great appreciation for what and how they did all the little things we take so for granted now. I might also suggest that you actually try some of the things mentioned in these volumes. It will give you even more of an appreciation for what they did, and hey, who knows, the skill you develope just might come in handy one of these days! Recommend this and the other Foxfire books highly.

I love the Foxfire books. Sine I have the rest of this series, I had to have this one also! It is as wonderful as the rest of the Foxfire books!

This collection of stories is outstanding. It is hard to put the book down. It makes you long for a simpler life.

The "Foxfire 40th Anniversary Book" is a wonderful tribute to the people of Appalachia as they shared memories of their lives and culture with us. This book follows the same down-to-earth tone as the preceeding volumes. The earlier ones were very informative and enjoyable, and this one certainly lives up to that standard.

American politics is comprised of three kinds of people: Those who wittingly support the state, those who unwittingly support the state, and those who support the people. Representing the third kind, Frank Chodorov was a relentless champion of the people. In a conversational style, Frank Chodorov wrote tirelessly on the threats to liberty (threats spearheaded by the state itself). He told us that an income tax was unAmerican and how it is a disguised confiscation of property. He told us that militarism was unAmerican and that political powers gained through war are never abdicated. He understood the game of dictators and he could see that America was in the game.

Why does it take men of Russian heritage, men like Chodorov, Soltzynizn, Dostoevsky, to tell Americans what freedom is? Because Americans have been duped into believing their leaders are gods. "The censorship of thought is a military necessity" wrote Chodorov. Familiar with the warning in George Orwell's 1984, Chodorov wrote, "if the war draws large chunks of our population to the land, an American state after the pattern of orwell's 1984 may be averted." It wasn't averted. Chodorov writes, "the direction of the American state will be toward the acquisition of power for war purposes...the tendency will be more and more toward totalitarianism. That is unavoidable."

Chodorov knew the game so well he could make predictions that were correct to the smallest detail. Anticipating the Cold War, he wrote, "We are again being told to be afraid. As it was before the two world wars so it is now: politicians talk in frightening terms, journalists invert scare lines, and even next-door neighbors are taking up the cry: the enemy is at the gates; we must gird for battle."

And so it was.

And so it was again when we went to Vietnam in 1964 and so it was again when we went to Iraq in 2003. The game of dictators. Chodorov was our leader, and no one has ever heard of him.

Frank Chodorov has been dead since 1966. Today, his invisible torch is carried by 2008 Presidential Candidate RON PAUL. These great men who represent the people are so few. The people are the victims of their own ignorance, their own apathy, their own dogmatism. And only when our national buildings and Interstates are stripped of their criminal identies such as Hoover, LBJ, and Bush, and replaced with those who stand for freedom, like Chodorov, Nock, Rothbard, and Paul, will the people know that these men made a difference. And that difference was liberty itself.

Long before there was such a thing as a libertarian movement, Frank Chodorov was one of the most genial defenders of freedom, of individual rights and sovereignty, and of properly-construed government (sole legitimate business, other than protecting her citizens from enemies abroad and predators - real predators, please, not mere vicemongers - at home: staying the hell out of your business, my business, every citizen's business, until or unless one citizen would abrogate a fellow citizen's equivalent rights) against the improperly consecrated State (which imposes itself upon every last shard of your business, though it be not competent nor Constitutionally sanctioned to do so).

Across these forty-five essays, written with grace, wit, and gentility, you will get to know a clarity of thinking and of feeling uncommon in contemporary sociopolitical writing. You will also get to know a man who suffered neither fools nor collectivists left or right gladly, yet had the surety never to make it a personal or a venal rebuke. I could point to numerous examples of just how lyric, how embracing, was his way of enunciating all the reasons why we should be and remain suspicious of the encroachments of the State against the sovereignty of the individual, but perhaps this will do for an introduction, from his gentle rebuke to the militant wing of the anti-Communist movement, written at the threshold of the Smith Act trial of 1949, "How To Curb The Commies." Here is wisdom we would do wisely to heed even now, as only too many of our fellows seem sooner disposed to a curb upon our freedoms than a healthy defence thereof):

"Heterodoxy is a necessary condition of a free society...Whenever I choose an idea and label it 'right,' I imply the prerogative of another to reject that idea and label it 'wrong.' To invalidate his right is to invalidate mine...The danger, to those who hold freedom as the highest good, is not the ideas the communists espouse but the power they aspire to. Let them rant their heads off - that is their right, which we cannot afford to infringe - but let us keep from them the political means of depriving everybody else of the same right."

As unpretentious and as gently stylish in his way as was his great mentor Albert Jay Nock, Frank Chodorov's championship of freedom should never be purged from what remains of our patrimony.

Frank Chodorov was anything but an "ivory towered professor" as these essays will attest. He was a self-made man, and he was not swayed by the political trends of his times. He had little patience with the naive leftests, and he separated himself from what Lawrence Dennis called "The Dumb Right."

Chodorov was opposed to socialism. He was obviously at odds with the True Believing Communists, but he also expressed criticism at the New Dealers whom he thought would inaugurate socialism under different labels. He shared many of the same criticisms that John T. Flynn had of the New Deal programs.

One of the themes that Chodorov emphasizes is the fact that the "Capitalists" did not do a good job of defending themselves in refuting their Marxist and socialists critics. Chodorov is clear that anyone looking to the professors for intellectual support against Marxist and socialist criticisms was wasting their time. Chodorov was also against supressing Free Speech and Free Press of the Marxists and socialists. He remarked that to do so was to emulate the Communists wherevever they held power that emulating the Communists' tactics lowered Americans to their level. Chodorov's solution was for men to refute the ideas of the Marxists. In other words, one should confront the buzz words and phrases and slogans of the Marxists and socialists such as surplus value, greed, etc.

While Chodorov disagreed with Big Communism, he was no supporter of the Conservatives dreams of the U.S. Military State. In fact Chodorov was disillusioned with many Conservatives who wanted to build a garrison state in the U.S. and match such as state with a police state. Chodorov stated that the Conservatives would split over Anti-Communism, and Chodorov had little patience with "The Dumb Right." In fact, he stated that if anyone ever called him a Conservative, he would punch that person in the nose.

Yet, Chodorov's criticism of Big Communism was more incisive than most Conservatives. One remark he made that was so true was the Big Communism would rise over the dead of the Capitalists AND the workers in The Workers' Paradise. Chodorove also accurately argued that Big Communism would collapse due to its disasterous economic policies. He knew that only because the West, including the U.S., subsidized Big Communism, Big Communism survived. In other words, Chodorov thought that Big Communism's collapse would result from ecomonic policy rather than fruitless wars.

Frank Chodorov's thinking and writing was similiar to that of Albert Jay Nock and other thoughtful men who valued liberty more than they hated "The Enemy" whoever the enemy was at any given time. This reviewer's only criticism of Chodorov is that he could have embellished his arguements against socialism and especially Big Communism by citing historical examples.

Frank Chodorov's writing is clear and thoughtful. Anyone who reads his work would learn not only clear thinking, but they would learn good writing from someone who did not clutter his work with quotes and useless phrases.

Excellent book. Quite detailed with many germane, practical, real world, applications. Very few, if any academic blather.

The book was delivered in a quick manner, and the condition of it is stellar. What a value and bargain for this purchase!!

I received the book sooner than expected and it was in the condition that they said it would be in. I couldn't have been happier. Thanks!

This is a great reference tool. I was somewhat disappointed that some smaller funds with outstanding track records were excluded; however, with over 9,000 funds available the authors had to draw the line somewhere.

This book is a wonderful source of mutual fund data. I am just a an average joe who needed some help in the investment world. With this book, I was able to avoid those money grubbing brokers and get business handled on my own terms. I have told all my family and friends about this book and they are just as pleased as I am. I suggest that you let Morningstar do the hard research and number crunching for you, too.

Morningstar is the reason that I have been able to retire early. Much earlier than I ever thought possible. I have recommended their various publications to friends of mine, who have all come up to thank me later on. And the folks at Morningstar are just beautiful people.

Hedging has always tempted the investors and the boom of hedge funds on the market has cought us the academic world unprepared just like the era of Tatcher and Reagan that has created tatcharism and reaganomics. This study is one of the few in this sphere but certainly one of the best for giving knowledge in the area of hedge funds and funds of hedge funds. This can be a excellent handbook for lots of emerging market economies, where people has suffered from lots of financial robberies - first by the communist party and then by their pyramidal creations.
- Dr. Georgi Smatrakalev, Florida Atlantic Univeristy, USA

Working in the FOF industry I am constantly looking for new academic and practitioner research. This book has a good mix between the two. Most of the articles focus on a quantitative approach but there are also chapters that have a qualitative mix to them. I highly suggest it for anyone interested in the FOF industry from the experienced to newcomers. The articles are split into sections where some are appealing to investors performing due-diligence on prospective investments in a FOF, some on monitoring existing investments, and some on constructing FOF portfolios which will appeal to FOF managers. So there is something available for people who are looking to invest in FOFs and something for FOFs themselves to see how outsiders will conduct due-diligence on them, where they need to improve, and cutting edge portfolio construction techniques.

The book is split into four parts: the first finds out the distinctiveness of performance for funds of hedge funds (alpha, persistence, factor decomposition, portfolio optimization). The second part deals with diversification, selection, allocation and hedge fund indices where correlations effects are analysed among different managing styles. Thirdly, some essays are devoted to construction, and statistical properties of funds of hedge funds, such as distributional characteristics, and higher-moment performance characteristics. Finally, the volume investigates specific items such as monitoring risk, due diligence and special classes of funds of funds, where one of the main problems is to implement quantitative methodologies to select the hedge funds. The book is a must-read for those who are looking for an edge in applying the more sophisticated approaches that have recently been developed in the hedge funds industry.
Giampaolo Gabbi, University of Siena and SDA Bocconi, Italy