What will you learn from this book?

A lot of financial concepts, instruments and products.
If you do not know anything about financial markets, this is the book!!!!

Is it enough? NO, it is not enough even for a beginner. Why? Because it does not tell you how to think in financial terms, and mainly how to make up your portfolio.

Yes, lots of graphs, figures, nice words, you think you are learning finance, but suddenly you realize that actually you know nothing and that you read a lot of vain pages. Unfortunately, you will be in the end of the book.

If want to know how to implement the models presented in the book, or even if you want a book that says the same thing that Sharpe's but in less pages, consider:

- Modern Investment Theory by Robert A. Haugen; or
- Modern Portfolio Theory and Investment Analysis by Edwin J. Elton, Martin J. Gruber.

I had the opportunity to take a course at the University of Minnesota from Jeff Bailey while he was preparing this book. He provided an excellent mixture of pratical examples in addition to the theory involved.

In addition, he was very approachable.

Anyone seriously interested in investing should consider this book!

This is one of the handful of classic texts in economics and finance - it ranks with Samuelson's "Economics," Alpha C. Chiang's "Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics" and Hull's "Options and Other Derivative Securities" as one of the cornerstones of a financial education. Designed as a college textbook but also used in first-year MBA programmes, the authors begin right at the bottom with basic microeconomics and moves on through spot rates and yield curves, simple probability, expected returns and standard deviations. Once this basic toolkit has been establised, the reader is introduced to the efficient frontier and the Capital Asset Pricing Model, followed by arbitrage pricing theory. Further topics include fundamental securities analysis and a quick journey through option pricing. After a look at some institutional aspects of financial markets, the authors conclude with that holy grail of finance - portfolio management. Throughout, the pace is reasonable and the reader is provided with plenty of practice examples. For a one-stop introduction to finance, you cannot do better than this book.

My father personally knows some of the people that were caught in the middle of this investigation. Wrongdoing was going on, however; the way reporters painted the picture of how some people had to live their lives due to this investigation were untrue. There were no bodyguards for Barbara or A. Cowen. No black roses or death threats sent to their offices. The mystery man throughout the whole event? It's no mystery to me, I know. Trust me, prosecutors couldn't find any evidence towards this man because there was no evidence. Reporters found a way to make this spectacle look entertaining, and that's all it was...entertainment.

This was a very interesting book discussing the fall of the former Governor of Oklahoma for illegal actions taken while in office. The book gives a great introduction to some of the problems with our judicial system but shows that this system ultimately works in the end. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Oklahoma politics, federal prosecution, or law.

This book would normally get a "10" for providing us with the shorter poems of Edmund Spenser, but it is marred by overediting. The collective ego of Yale comes through on almost every page. I can see one footnote that begins, "There is irony here." I ask, is there any poem without irony? Why point it out? A footnote should be providing the student with factual information, references to allusions, etc., and not providing interpretation. So, buy the book; Spenser is so great a poet that philosophy textbooks sometimes devote pages to him; but ignore the editing.

If you are in any way responsible academically for Spenser's shorter works, this is the book. Editing, of course, refers to how the text of the poems is managed with regard to conflicts in early editions, etc. Here, decisions on text are made consistently and all changes vs. early texts are listed in the Appendices. Also useful, even though it's now more than 12 years out of date, is the annotated bibliography, which provides a good starting point for additional literary research.

This book "Counting the Cost" is a wonderful biography of Alexander Mack, the reluctant founder of the Brethren religion (who are sometimes called "the dunkers" for their baptism rituals). It is immensely readable (except possibly for the German pronunciation of some of the locales), and covers the founding of the church in Germany, and the wanderings of the members that finally led them to the United States.

The story is filled with interesting historical facts (as the author literally traced Mack's footsteps for more than 10 years), but it is also a story of the family relationships and hardships in the face of a calling from God. I think you will find it fascinating.

I have found that reflecting on my behavior can be helpful. This book enabled me to take some of those brief moments of quiet time and turn them into enjoyable and thoughtful times. I gave it to a friend who is also a father, and now I am buying a replacement copy.

It looks kind of like a presentation bound together for a business meeting, which is to say that the book looks very home-made.

Don't let that throw you. Those of us not into Wicca crave a book like this which basically covers Judeo-Christian mysticism and spells (some of this material has been appropriated by Wicca, but not much). You will come away from reading it with a deeper knowledge of the roots of magic than you could get from your average Wiccan book, and also a sense of spirituality that is so sadly lacking in many books that cover the subject of what may be called witchcraft.

It's too bad that William Oribello has passed on; we could use more authors of this type.

Wiccans and other Pagans may be confused by this book, and find it useless - especially if they have chosen to believe that non-Pagan religions forbid witchcraft (they don't, but that argument is not the subject here). But if you're already into "witchcraft" and Christianity, I think you'll like the book a lot.

This is the best work of Shakespeare that I have read. It contains jems of wisdom, such as the fall of Cardinal Wolsey, or the sympathetic speaches of Queen Catherine. These are also events of history, not far removed from Shakespeare's own times; tragic events which ultimately reshaped the world we live in.

This book is written in an accessible and practical format. It assumes nothing but at the same time treats the reader as an intelligent participant on the journey to understanding evidence based practice.

It is up to date and I was especially impressed with the web address it gives to ensure the reader is kept abreast of any changes since publication.

It systematically explains the need and use of 'evidence', how to find it (the search advice is comprehensive and includes details such as search terms and the best search engines aswell as web addresses) how to evaluate it and also how to act on it.

All in all this book was great, and I would reccomend it to anyone involved in evidence based healthcare practice as it will guide you through the thorniest problems.

Bonnie Ellen Blustein's biography of William A. Hammond, Preserve Your Love for Science, details the life of the neurologist from his early days in Annapolis to his death in 1900. Hammond was close to being a Renaissance man; he was a physician, researcher, businessman, writer and teacher. Hammond wrote hundreds of articles, two dozen medical books and at least eight novels. Blustein portrays Hammond as a very complicated individual who was often progressive scientifically while being a reactionary on many social issues and a physician who made medicine commercial. Hammond was commissioned in the Army in 1849 and took his new wife with him out to Santa Fe. He wrote his first paper on treating scurvy in the Army. "'The researches of animal chemistry have,' he declared, 'thrown some light upon the pathology of scurvy.' If his anecdotal reports were confirmed by further research, 'it will not be the least boon which that science has conferred upon the practice of medicine.'" Hammond viewed science as a very important part of medicine, which was something of a new idea for many doctors in the mid-1800s. Advances in the sciences of chemistry and biology, along with new tools like improved microscopes, gradually started to make medicine more of a science than an apprenticed craft during the nineteenth century.

In early 1862, Hammond was named Surgeon General. The Army Medical Corps was very understaffed and underequipped. Hammond tried to bring the Army Medical Corps into the middle of the nineteenth century. The Army camps were filthy, badly maintained and served as transmission vectors for disease. He wrote Treatise on Hygiene with Special Reference to the Military Service in an attempt to modernize the building of army hospitals. Hammond introduced many other innovations to the Army, including requiring testing of would-be Army doctors and removing calomel as a standard medicine in the Army pharmacies. This caused an enormous controversy among the older Army doctors who demanded that Hammond be fired. Hammond, a very stubborn man, insisted on being court-martialed, believing he would be vindicated. Instead, he was found guilty of misconduct and fired from his position. Fifteen years later, the Secretary of War formerly pardoned Hammond after extensive petitioning by his supporters.

Hammond settled in New York City, opened a private practice and taught at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. He helped to start the Post-Graduate Medical School, so that physicians could continue their training. This school stressed the importance of training in emerging medical specialties. While it included some scientific training, the focus remained more clinical than theoretical. Hammond lectured there, as did his son Graeme. As he built his practice in New York City, he specialized in neurology. He wrote a major, early work on neurology, Treatise on the Diseases of the Nervous System.

While there were times when Hammond was a leader in promoting the science of medicine, there were other times when Hammond was decidedly very unscientific. Hammond tried to prove a number of times that blacks, Indians and women were mentally inferior. After studying women's brains, he stated:

"'Difference of structure necessarily involves difference of function.' Hammond did not supply anatomical details, but had no doubts himself that the brain of woman 'is perfectly adapted to the proper status of woman in the established plan of nature, and for that very reason it is not suited to the work which is required of a man's brain. It is a brain,' he continued, 'from which emotion rather than intellect is involved.'" However, Hammond's anti-feminist views were criticized by physicians as well as women. He eventually recanted some of his beliefs, but always insisted that sex differences could be accounted for by brain weight.

Blustein presented many divergent views of Hammond, and concluded that "William Alexander Hammond preserved his love for science, and the altars of expediency on which he felt compelled to sacrifice tell us a great deal about the social context of late nineteenth-century American medicine." Hammond's views of men as insane and women as hysterics did not survive as medicine moved from being quasi-scientific to genuinely scientific.

The auther seems to think it more important to be witty and wordy then to try to convey information. The book was painful to read.

I feel moved to respond to some of the reviews below, which seem to me to judge the book more in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is. This is an excellent book to read *as* you're taking lessons; the book provides a wonderful companion to your ongoing learning, offering some fascinating insights on body perception and habits of movement, insights that have stuck with me half a decade after I first read the book. It's a great book to browse through, reading chapters as they relate to your interests. What the book is *not* is an introduction for absolute beginners who've not heard of the technique before; it is intended for people who have taken or will take Alexander lessons, and in this it succeeds admirably.

There seems to be a lot of controversy about whether someone can learn the Alexander Technique without a teacher. My own experience started with taking lessons from a teacher, but I've met several people who learned quite a bit on their own - not just learned it intellectually (which doensn't do much good anyway) but also were able to apply what they had learned to improve their posture, coordation and balance in very concrete ways.

"How to Learn the Alexander Technique" is a great starting-out place for anyone who's interested in the process but either doesn't have a teacher or would prefer to do as much on their own as possible. But it would be unfair to dismiss the usefulness of the Alexander Technique if you don't succeed. After all, most people have lessons in learning how to drive a car and so it's not surprising if you end up needing at least some lessons in learning how to "drive" yourself in a better way.

Ultimately, I think the best place to get a deeper understanding of the Technique is from Alexander's own books. But a very good first step is the Conables' book, "Body Learning" by Gelb and "Fitness Without Stress" by Rickover. Also a book called "Freedom to Change" by Jones.