Market-value

A good attempt at explaining the costs of living in capitalism. A bit dated considering the World Trade Organization, computerization and downsizing, but he makes points most people need to hear and consider. Well worth reading and thinking about. Order a copy and begin to think!

Ever worry that your doctor has the HMO profit margins in mind more than your care? Ever get disgusted by big time college sports? Ever worry about the erosion of values and cohesion in your community? Then this book is for you.

This is a marvelous book that explores how people should think about their places in our society. Schwartz, a Professor at Swarthmore College, has a well-deserved reputation for debunking commonly held myths promulgated by economists and others who seek to explain all human behavior by supply and demand curves, and irresistible biological imperatives.

Yes, we do have a choice about how we want our communities to function, and Schwartz tells us how we can ``reintroduce the language of responsibility and morality into our public life.''

Schwartz also has a rare gift for making complex topics seem easy to understand. This is a surprisingly readable book, full of anecdotes and examples that will help you relate the ideas to your own life. Its conclusion, about a dilemma Schwartz faced in his own community, is notable for its drama as well as for the fact that Schwartz declines to offer easy answers.

Read this book, and you will think differently (and more perceptively) about the world around you. It is *that* good.

Read this book if you have ever been concerned about how some of our societies great institutions are being weakened by the market pressures of today. Ever worry that your doctor has the HMO profit margins in mind more than your care? Ever get disgusted by big time college sports? Ever worry about the erosion of values and cohesion in your community? Then this book is for you.

Good book but too much repeated from "Mass Customization"...the author's excellent preceding title.

Have read most of the authors in this volume, but still refer back to my yellow hi-liting and post-it tabs. Tempting to read only executive summaries, but these fail to capture the needed depth provided in the chapters. One of the better compilations I've come across in some time. Probably only thing that's missing is "how to." I suspect that requires more than just deep thinking, but a cross-disciplinary team.

Gilmore and Pine co-authored The Experience Economy, a book I consider one of the most important business books written in recent years. In this volume, they anthologize ten essays which -- together -- answer questions such as these:

1. What is "the emerging theory of manufacturing"? (Peter Drucker)

2. How to market in "the age of diversity"? (Regis McKenna)

3. How to manage in "an age of modularity"?

4. Do you want to keep your customers forever? (Pine, Don Peppers, and Martha Rogers)

5. Is your company ready for one-to-one marketing? (Peppers, Rogers, and Bob Dorf)

6. What are the correlations between "breaking compromises" and "breakaway growth"? (George Stalk, Jr., David K. Pecault, and Benjamin Burnett)

7. What are the "four faces" of mass customization"? (Gilmore and Pine)

8. What is "versioning"? Why is it the smart way to sell information? (Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian)

9. How to make mass customization work? (Pine, Bart Victor, and Andrew C. Boynton)

10. What does "managing by wire" involve? (Stephan H. Haeckel and Richard L. Nolan)

At the conclusion of their book, the authors also provide immensely helpful "Executive Summaries" of key points made in each of the various essays, and, brief but informative comments about those who wrote them. If you are looking for the single best source of information and about mass customization, look no further.

I found the information in this flea market guide to be very helpful in calculating the value of many every day items that you find at flea markets and garage sales. The broad content covering many items made it easy to look up items that I couldn't find in other similar price guide books.

I was very satisfied with the book and prefer it over some other well known antique and flea market price guide books that I have purchased before. It makes an excellent source to refer to when attempting to figure out the worth of an item that can't be found in some of the other guides.

The guide offer a variety of catagories and is certainly a book I would recommend for anyone researching flea market and related items. There is a wealth of good information in the book.

Oh boy guys, this is a great one! It is a MUST have for any
serious Flea Marketer, especially members of The Fleamarketsellers Community.
Sincerely,
Mark Marcarian

John Train's slim book The Craft of Investing has a title that might mislead some readers into thinking that it is another one of his well-crafted overviews on investing. A good portion of the text, however, deals with topics that are probably most relevant to high networth individuals, family wealth management professionals and private bankers. Other investors will find chapters such as "Family Capital," "The [Trust] Executor's Job," and "How to Use a Safe-Deposit Box" less than relevant.

There are passages that are of interest to a wider audience. The first portion of the book is a brief, but useful survey of different investment styles. Other passages provide an interesting distillation of Train's tips on what makes a good investor, for instance, his advice about reverse engineering the trades of well-regarded institutional investors ("start by piggybacking on the thinking of the best professionals"); keeping a conservative approach to investing (which he says favors " sober, seasoned, careful older people"), and honing of investment skills to a professional level. "Most points are lost on errors, rather than by forcing shots. Since the investor never has to act, he should focus on not making avoidable mistakes." There is not enough meat on the bone here, though, to rank this book as one of Train's better ones. Instead, readers new to his work are better off starting with The Money Masters and The New Money Masters, two books that rank among the best in the investment field.

Overall this is a great investment book. It covers an extremely broad range of topics and for the most part the reader cannot go too far wrong following the author's advice. The sections on the nature of markets and his advice on commodities alone makes the book worthwhile. Bear in mind that the book was published in 1994 but most of the content is timeless. Another book with much of the same advice is The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need by Andrew Tobias. One additional thing- some of the charts and tables and examples date from the 1970's and are evidently from magazine articles that the author wrote. Just so you know what you are buying. The example are good ones and mostly remain relevant today. The only real limitation of the book is Train's simplistic approach to growth stock picking.

It is impossible to praise this book enough. I have been actively investing for greater than 10 years, and I have read more books than I care to count. You will feel much more confident in your investing and making choices. I finally have a good grip on why do stocks go up and down. But you get insight into other matters as well ,and get to feel the wisdom of a true master,in a well written easy style. Just what we need during this deflating bubble we are in now.

Whirligig By: Paul Fleischman

The Whirligig was a really good book. If you like a touching book, then this is definitely for you. This book was about a boy named Brent who's pretty young, but old enough to have his license. Brent means well, he cares for everyone but he wasn't in, what people call it "the in group". Johnathan was one of Brent's friends and he tried to include him on as much as he could, like going to parties together and doing basic guy things.
One night a terrible thing happened. Brent hit a girls named Lea. Lea was killed. The Zamora family, which was Lea's family, had to go to court with Brent's family. After going through that whole mess with the judge, Brent felt terrible about what he had done. Brent told Mrs. Zamora if there was anything he could do to make it up to them, so she told Brent to put a certain kind of post in the four corners of the United States. The four corners of the United States are Washington, California, Florida, and Maine. The post was called a whirligig.
This was a good book; I like how real it seemed. It was almost like I was there. There wasn't much of this story that I didn't like. If this sounds like your kind of book you should read it.

When I read the book Whirligig, I realized how precious life is. Before I read it, I had a very narrow mind when it came to seeing the beauty of life. The author, Paul Fleischman, did a great job with his style of writing. He wrote the book so that you could easily pull one of the many lessons out. In the beginning of the story, you meet Brent. He seems to be an average teenager, but he has a lot of emotional issues. Because of the fact that his family is always moving, he has a hard time fitting in, so he is always trying to be cool. When Brent goes to a party dressed wrong, and gets put down by a girl he likes, he attempts suicide. However, Brent does not succeed in his quest. Instead, he does something much worse. His actions cause someone that he hurt to ask him of one request; he has to build a whirligig in each in each corner of the United States. Though the task seemed unusual, Brent set off to keep the memory of all that he had taken, alive. As you read on, you follow Brent on his journey across the country as he meets new friends, makes new whirligigs, and discovers the meaning of life. In a way, the author wrote this book as if it were a whirligig itself. Like a whirligig, it has many different parts to it. It is colorful, sad, and beautiful. It will, and has touched many lives, and like a whirligig, I am sure that it will never cease to live.

I tend to read quite a few books in my spare time. Out of all of the books I have read I would say Whirligig is one of the best. It has a bit of tragedy, excitement, and friendship. Over all, it is a great book to read.
The book Whirligig is about a teenage boy named Brent. In the beginning he goes to a party that he wasn't invited to. Every thing seems to wrong for him and to top it all off he gets rejected by a girl he really likes. That's what happens at the beginning of the book.
At this point Brent, who is so drunk, tries to kill himself in a car crash. The only problem is, instead of killing himself he kills a young woman named Lea. he is charged with drunk driving and a fine from court. He also has to meet with Lea's mother.
The only thing Lea's mother requests of Brent, is for him to build four whirligigs in Washington, California, Florida, and Maine, the four corners of the United States. Lea's mother wants him to do this because Lea had a whirligig that brought her so much joy and Lea's mother wants to spread that joy.
Brent accepts this quest and sets out immediately. He goes to Washington first and can't find anywhere to stay at the campground. He asks a man who just arrived if he can stay in the same site as him. The man agrees and Brent stays in the tent next to him. Brent has trouble with his first whirligig but once he builds it he moves on.
Brent then travels to California. When he tries to check in at the hotel someone tries to steal his backpack but Brent notices. The clerk says they only take people not from the US so Brent answers some questions about Canada and the clerk lets him stay. Brent does much better when he builds his second whirligig. He then leaves the whirligig at the hotel.
He proceeds to his third destination, Florida. Here he gets a room and gets right to work on his whirligig. Some kids bother him and they make friends. The kids tell him a strong storm will destroy the whirligig. Brent thinks it is ok because he showed the kids who to make whirligigs and knows they will make more. Brent is nearing his final stop, Maine.
When Brent arrives in Maine he discovers that he left his whirligig book on the train. He begins to work on his best and final whirligig. He meets a young woman and makes a new friend. His last whirligig is three times as big as the other three. He is carrying the whirligig down the beach on his back looking for a good place to put it. He then comes across the woman's house. They walk through her garden and find a good place to put it.
I would suggest this book if you're looking for a good book to read. I give it a five star. I have read quite a few books and this is one if the best.

I have read many investment books but this gets my vote for the best of all of them. It is very easy to read as it is so well written and Mr. Vick makes many points that are so indisputable that I plan to re-read and re-read this book many times over in order to see through the sales pitch that Wall Street often sells us.

This is an outstanding book, and is very timely in our present market of "irrational exuberance."

The author effectively dispels the arguments of efficient markets, market timing, and even technical analysis with a focus on a company's inherent value, rather than a company's transient stock price.

For example: the author illustrates that how dividends are responsible for about half of the historical returns of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and how growth in earnings correlates very well over time with stock price appreciation.

In a time where companies are trading at generous premiums to their growth rates, this book gives the reader an effective, systematic approach to selecting "value" stocks.

If you have ever wanted to learn about what a "value" stock is, and do not want to delve into the dry prose of Graham, this book is for you!

I have read numerous books on personal finance and investing, and this is honestly one of the most thought-provoking and interesting books I have read on the subject. I wholeheartedly recommend it to all readers (especially those willing to pay top-dollar for non-existent earnings at Amazon!).

For more than two years, my husband and I have been searching for a one-stop shop primer on how to pick a good stock and build a portfolio. Wall Street on Sale is it. It is carefully researched, answers every question an investor wants answered (how to find value, how long to hold, when to sell, how many stocks to own, how to maximize returns, etc.), and is wonderfully written. I have also read some of the books on Warren Buffett and value investing and found Wall Street on Sale to be the BEST- by a longshot. The author's early chapters on contrarian investing and ignoring the market are as potent and groundbreaking as you will find. His later chapters on valuing companies give even more detail than anything Peter Lynch has written. A lot of investing books seem to be written just to build the author's fame or to entice you to use a system that may work short term. I got the impression from reading Wall Street on Sale that the author truly wanted to help investors understand the complexities of the market. This book will convert any reader instantly to the value side. Anne Dennison, Tinley Park, Illinois

The 1990's have brought a striking popularity in books that promise outsize returns based on simple formulas. The most obvious example of the genre is the Dow Dogs strategy. Made popular by Michael O'Higgins and Jim O'Shaughnessy, among others, underperformance in recent years has done little to dampen investor enthusiasm.

Kenneth Lee's Trouncing The Dow offers a new twist on betting the undervalued Dow stocks theory. Employing a methodology he dubs benchmark investing, Lee seeks to establish price ranges using historical return on equity and price/book value figures. Once established these price ranges are used to establish concrete reference points the investor can use to consistently focus on undervalued stocks. The book has tables of the calculations from 1973-96, allowing those so inclined to compare current valuations with past Dow results under most market conditions. The process also forces the reader to dig into a company's fundamentals and get a feel for how it has been priced in the past.

The appeal here is obvious. A concise method for divining value on a select group of non-volatile stocks where information is readily available. (Lee suggests using The Value Line Investment Survey). The mechanical process eliminates emotion from the equation, allowing the reader to use history as a guide when uncertainty has gripped the market. The fact that Lee stresses low turnover, eschews market timing, and adheres to popular value tenets puts the ideas here on the same wavelength as studies produced recently in books by Jeremy Siegel and Jim O'Shaughnessy. Personally however, when I see strategies based on Dow stocks I tend to want to see computer studies based on similar stocks. I want to see large samples. They give the picture texture and background, they help point out any possible flaws or reasons for concern. Back testing has its limitations. Early on Lee states he originally developed the formula employing the Value Line universe on a computer. In fact, the current configuration of Value Line's electronic product makes Lee's process relatively easy to implement on a broad scale. To include summaries of the results of that data would have added considerable weight to his argument.

It seems to me that the real question here is whether anomalies pointed out here and popularized by O'Higgins and others will continue to outperform. Indeed, many of the ideas here overlap with popular titles of the last few years. Is the Wall Street establishment so short-term focused that long-term value plays based on simple rules offer an easy short cut? Though many would like to deny it, there is enough efficiency in the United States equity markets to make outperformance a relatively difficult task. Though the idea of "beating the experts" without complex strategies makes a cute media story, it continues to be a tall order.

In Trouncing The Dow, Lee makes the case it can be done. The book is a quick read and offers a formula that anyone can employ to make up his or her own mind.

Kenneth Lee's new book, "Trouncing the Dow" is an easy to read, new, conservative investing strategy based on purchasing only those stocks that are trading below their downside target prices. I found this book to be refreshing and practical. Mr. Lee takes readers through his "Benchmark Investing Formula", a seven step process, to arrive at a stock's historical average return on equity for the past ten years. The idea is to purchase stocks trading near or below their past ten year average. In a market that many analysts and investors consider overvalued, Mr. Lee shows readers how to avoid the overvalued stocks and select stocks where the downside risk is low. Mr. Lee goes through his formula with detailed examples, talks about exceptions to the rules and gives a lot of historical data to support his strategy. Mr. Lee's stock picking strategy appears to be sound and logical and is supported by solid data. It's a conservative approach which should be appealing to long term investors trying to increase returns while minimizing risk. I highly recommend this book to serious investors.

The 10 most undervalued stocks selected by benchmark investing (as taught in my book) from the S&P 100 averaged 51.20 percent in 2003 versus 23.84 percent for the index itself. The top five picks performed even better, up an average 80.82 percent.

Obviously, 2003 was a good year for stocks. But had you used benchmark investing beginning in 2000 until the end of last year, and bought the 10 most undervalued stocks from the S&P 100 you would have enjoyed a compounded total average return of 8.71 percent. During the same period, the index lost an average of -7.69 percent a year. So, you might want to take a look at benchmark investing in this book.

P.S. I do NOT have any web sites on the net, so don't assume I'm involved with any of them.

This is an account of one man's slow and painful descent into madness. The descent is caused by compulsive thinking, with an obsessive need to find "The Answer" and to take on the established order. The object of the obsession is hardly relevant. The greatest value of this book is as a cautionary tale against over-thinking.

The word "Zen" does not belong in the title of this book. Zen is something to be practiced and lived, and there isn't the slightest hint that Pirsig is in tune with this concept.

This is the kind of book that a person who is intelligent but uneducated in philosophy would pick up, read, and be excited and terribly enlightened by. This apparently was the state of many of the "hippies" who read this book when it came out. But for someone who has read Aristotle and Plato and the myriad of others, especially the Greeks, this book can seem almost ridiculously off-center in its generalizations. Whether it is or not, that is for the reader to decide, I suppose.

The narrator is at first likeable, but as the book moves on and his madness becomes evident, you see his character become despicable, self-absorbed, mean, closed-minded, and, well, a hypocrite in a number of ways. This change may be a large part of the appeal of this book as a sort of psychological novel, though I am still not sure whether that is what Pirsig intended it to be.

Despite the disgust and boredom I sometimes felt while reading, the book has a lot of good things to say about living and the self. Most importantly, if you pay enough attention it will definitely get you thinking. Overall, a controversial book, but worth reading if only for the thought and controversy it will provoke within your own mind.

Read this book. Talk about it. Share it with your friends. This book is more important than one thinks at first glance. I have read it 5 times over the past 25 years, first as a teenager thinking it was about motorcycles, next as a Philosophy major at Harvard, and each time I have gotten something new out of it. It is more than a travel adventure. It is more than a father/son reconciliation story. It is more than an autobiographical odyssey of psychological redemption. It is even more than an "inquiry into values." This book reveals the greatest crime perpetrated against intellectual history. While Pirsig is concerned with a synthesis of Eastern and Western philosophical traditions, he points us to the violence done by Plato in his attack on the Sophists. Until Plato, Philosophy was a part of the common life. Sophists wandered the Greek world offering instruction (for pay) in rhetoric and Philosophy, and this was deemed the normal course of life. Even Plato's revered Socrates conducted his discourses in the marketplace, the agora. The aristocratic and elitist Plato's crime (in my view) was to whisk philosophical discussion away from the agora and put it in the acadamy, where it has remained gathering dust for 25 centuries. His Theory of Forms tells us that few, if any other than himself, can see things as they "really are." The Republic tells us that only the philosopher-king (Plato himself being the leading candidate) is fit to rule. If all of Philosophy is a "response to Plato" as A.N. Whitehead put it, then we are debating with a traitor to humanity. Nothing is more relevant than a synthesis of the Philosophical and the Practical ways of being, as well as Eastern and Western ways of thinking. I have devoted my life to dragging the philosophical debate back from the academy into the agora where it belongs and where it can be of the greatest good to the greatest number of people. Reading and sharing this book with friends is a wonderful way to begin that pilgrimage yourself. I just wish someone would make a film of it. Can't you just see William Hurt in the lead?

Remy was so excited to be in high-school and soon she will be able to drive. She has just but the slightest crush on a boy named Morgan who has dreamed about getting his license ever since he can remember. All of the students just think that driver's ed will be a bird course that they can just fly through, but it is not. Driver's ed is the only life or death class in school. You never know, but something could go wrong, and it did for Remy and her friends while just learning how to drive. Remy doesn't know how to deal with the accident and isn't quite sure how to tell her parents. I liked this book because actually, it is similar to my life, such as what it's like in the eyes of a teenager. This book also kept me filled with suspense especially when...well you'll have to read the book to find that out!

As a university student, I chose to read this book as part of a Young Adult Literature class. I enjoyed it for several reasons. First, the characters in the book are realistic and ones that readers can easily relate to. The book took me back to my teenage years when driving and dating seemed to be the most crucial aspects of life. The characters are not fluffed up to become some heroes they aren't. For example, even when Remy and Morgan, the protagonists, get into trouble beyond anything they could expect they still worry about their newfound relationship. These are real kids trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Another aspect I enjoyed was the way Caroline Cooney built up the suspense throughout the book. I experienced the same anticipation as the main characters and was never quite sure what they would ultimately decide to do. The ending is such that it leaves you meditating because the story does not feel quite finished. While some may view an unfinished story as irritating, I see it as an opportunity for the reader to make the story his or her own by personalizing it with his or her opinion of how the characters' lives will play out.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has experienced the torture of keeping a secret or has done something wishing no harm but later regretted the action. If you like this book, I would also recommend The Face on the Milk Carton by the same author.

The book that I read was called Drivers Ed. This book was about a girl named Remy and boy named Morgan. It takes place in an ordinary town with a high school full of kids taking Drivers Ed. The entire class began to talk about stealing signs and how much fun it would be. The next thing you know, Remy and Morgan find themselves out late one night, lying to their parents, being driven by the school delinquent, stealing signs, and falling in love. They had stolen a "THICKLY SETTLED" sign, a "MORGAN RD", and their next stop was a "STOP" sign, on one of the busier roads. They thought nothing of it. It was the last thing they thought would happen. None of them even thought of the possibility of a woman smashing into a truck and dying with the cause being a missing stop sign.

Guilt takes control of them. They can't even sleep properly. They couldn't handle all of this at once. Remy had no choice, her Drivers Ed teacher was accusing others of the crime, so she had to tell him. Then, they told their parents. Their parents were very hard on them. They acted like they didn't even love their own children anymore. The disappointment and anger from their parents wasn't anything compared to the woman's husband she left behind though. He put commercials up, he put ads in the newspaper, offered rewards for whom did the crime, and he was destroying their souls by using words like "tell me who murdered my wife". After they told their parents the truth, Morgan's father, whom was running for office, went to the husband's house and told him. The only thing he wanted from them was to leave, this was because nothing would happen to them, all they would get was a fine and community service tops. All he wishes is that all of their Christmas' and thanksgivings would be miserable, and they are. Throughout the story, Remy and Morgan's relationship grow, but in the end it was all too much and they had to end it. The ending concludes with Morgan's mother finally talking to him, and there is a sense of closure with everything.

My opinion of this book was that it was very descriptive and well written. When reading this book I felt like I knew Remy and Morgan personally. I felt like these things were happening to me, and I could feel what they were feeling. The author, Caroline B. Cooney, is remarkable at describing how guilt feels. She is a wonderful author and she shows her talent in writing novels in this book. She has also written other award-winning books such as the Face On the Milk Carton. I highly recommend this book Drivers Ed, and I would give it a nine out of ten.

Shades of Gray is a novel about a boy that faces some of the hardships of the Civil War. In the book, the main character named Will, is forced to live with his aunt and uncle after all of his family dies. Will was a strong Confederate supporter, and this clashes with his uncle's decision not to fight with the confederates. Will sees his uncle as a traitor, while his uncle thinks of himself as a person who thought there was no good cause to fight for. Will, being a city boy, encounters many troubles during his stay. Some of these include hardwork, a few mean boys, and a letter that could change the course of his life. I think that Shades of Gray is a good book. Not only is it good, but it accurately depicts the hard times during and after the Civil War. This book is enjoyable as well as informative. The characters seem to be very well developed. I give this book two thumbs up. I would recommend it to anyone that enjoys Civil War novels.

This is a great book. Will Page has to live with his uncle, aunt, and cousin after the rest of his family died in all different kinds of ways due to the Civil War that recently occured. Will in the beginning was acting too selfish, but towards the end, he appreciated his uncle after he didn't before because his uncle refused to fight against the Yankees. The Yankees killed Will's father and brother. Will decided to stay with his uncle, aunt, and cousin even after he got a letter from Doc Martin (an old friend) and said he could go and live a better life with him, but it was Will's choice.

I feel this book is great for fifth graders or fourth graders in Virginia who are studying the Civil War and Reconstruction in Virginia. Life during this period and the feelings of Virginians from many different biewpoints are represented in this great novel. My students thoroughly enjoyed this book as we discussed the history and life during this period in Virginia as we read it together. Characterization is great! By reading it together and discussing the events, the book came alive for my students.