It's not hard to see why this book is recommended by Morningstar both as one of the best books on stock investing and generally as an investing classic. Siegel successfully makes the case that the stock market is the major driver of successful portfolios--returning about 7 percent after inflation with remarkable consistency over the last 200 years.

But just as striking as his case for stocks as a group is his case against trying to pick individual stocks. The reason Peter Lynch and Warren Buffett are legends is that they are so rare: what they do--consistently picking stocks that substantially outperform the market--is virtually impossible.

Luckily, you don't have to be the next Lynch or Buffett to make money in the stock market. A diversified portfolio of low-cost index funds, using dollar-cost averaging and rebalancing, has a good chance of outperforming most professional money managers on a net basis.

This is the best book I've seen for those who want to know how we know that stocks outperform other investments over long periods. A good brief presentation of the same principles, with specific suggestions on how to implement them, is Bill Schultheis's book The Coffeehouse Investor.

I cannot put into words how valuable this book is to investors and those wanting to learn about investing alike. Whether you've invested your entire life or are curious about it from the recent stock market boom, Dr. Siegel clearly expresses why one must be in the market over the long run and how to do it.

With comprehensive graphs and easy to understand explanations, this book delivers an "all in one" knockout about equities. From international markets to the heated debate of growth versus value stocks, "Stocks for the Long Run" covers the entire spectrum of opportunities that exist for investors.

Readers will also gain an understanding of how monetary policy works in the United States. Wanting to know why the stock market boom has been occurring, why there is widespread misunderstanding about stocks, or the advantages and disadvantages to small caps? All are carefully detailed in this book. Dr. Siegel draws upon a plethora of historical evidence dating back to the early 19th century to make a compelling case for stocks so that people can live their lives instead of worrying about their financial future.

I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to reap the huge benefits of the stock market. Dr. Siegel is one of few people who understands how the market works and has the ability as an excellent writer to convey that knowledge. I guarantee you that this will be the best 20 bucks you've ever spent.

Buy, buy, buy! This is the best book on stocks and financials that I have ever read. History and perspective (which may be lacking in today's market)that is well written in an easy to digest style. With this book you don't need "Beating the Dow with Bonds" - throw it in the trash, stocks are proved winners; "Random Walk Down Wallstreet" - covered, save your money plus here there is some evidence for the 200-day moving average strategy - not so Random; "Contrarian Investment Strategies" - yes, proved to be the way to make money and covered in this book.... plus, did you know GE is the only original DOW stock or that the Russell 2000 are only 11% of the market's cap or the genesis of the Dow Transport? It's all in there and more.

This is a outstanding book if you are interested in the investment process. It covers recognizing and managing risk, asset allocation, and security selection . It's a challenging book, especially the area of hedging risk, but well worth the effort. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the mechanics of investment management.

The book is a reasonably interesting history of the mathematical analysis of risk. Bernstein discusses the development of probability and statistical analysis, and even some of the more modern concepts behind portfolio theory. However, I was disappointed overall. The cover and title misled me---I was hoping for a history of how the understanding of risk and the development of analytical tools led to the development of insurance markets, etc., and fundamentally changed how businesses operated in the face of uncertainty. When a shipper could insure his cargo, instead of just waiting for bad news, how did that change the world? I want to know! Instead, I got to read about who discovered the bell curve. I'm trained in a mathematical field, so I felt the discussion got a bit tedious.

I felt, overall, that the discussion was aimed more at explaining the math in layman's terms rather than exploring the impact of these developments on how people do business and make decisions.

Peter Bernstein's AGAINST THE GODS is an extremely informative and entertaining telling of the story of risk. Through the course of the book, he elucidates the basic concepts of risk in an informal yet highly effective manner. He delves into the human aspect quite a bit; we are privy to the trials and tribulations of those ingenious men who first pioneered the ideas behind chance and risk.

The primary purpose of AGAINST THE GODS is not as an introduction to risk management. For those who buy this book expecting such, you will be heavily disappointed. Instead, this is a terrific primer about risk and its history that will pique the interest of any person who has had little formal background in the science of risk management. The main strength of AGAINST THE GODS lies in its astounding clarity which does not come at the expense of comprehensiveness. Bernstein assumes no prior experience with mathematics or risk management. It is this accessibility which makes this the first book on risk you should buy.

In summary, I highly recommend this to anyone who has at least a passing interest in chance or risk. For those with experience in risk management, the history of risk presented in AGAINST THE GODS will still be very interesting. However, do not expect any of the ideas to be new.

Against the Gods is an outstanding book about the evolution of risk and man's attempt to understand it. Bernstein begins with ancient times and traces the history of numbers and probability leading eventually to today's seemingly complex financial world of portfolio theory, derivatives, and risk management techniques. Readers will learn about revolutionary thinkers including John von Neumann (inventor of game theory), Isaac Newton, Harry Markowitz (grandfather of portfolio theory), and the late Fischer Black (Black Scholes option formula) among others. Readers will also find enlightening stories about game theory, fibonacci numbers, chaos theory, the bell curve, regression to the mean, and more. Yet despite all the intelligence, computer power, and sophisticated techniques, Bernstein presents us with the growing body of evidence discovered by researchers including the late Amos Tversky and others that "reveals repeated patterns of irrationality, inconsistency, and incompetence in the ways human beings arrive at decisions and choices when faced with uncertainty." Against the Gods was chosen as one of Business Week's top 10 books of the year for 1996.

It appears from the obvious publisher-placed comments that I may be one of the few people who has actually READ this book. With his no-doubt legions of researchers, Peter Bernstein obviously has his facts at hand, and they are plentifully strewn throughout the book. But this is not a business book, it is a history book about the enduring lure of the element Au. It took me about a week to finish this, and I found much of it interesting. But overall, I thought that it read like a well-researched thesis that will probably stand the test of time. There are some truly fascinating stories in it, and it is well written, but don't expect this book to tell you how to find gold or how to make enough money to buy gold. It is what it is: the history of a metal that has never lost its lustre.

Peter L. Bernstein's history of gold is about much more than just the lure of precious metal - it's about man's relationship with wealth, his desire for prosperity and his lust for power. The story he tells presents an unflattering portrait of the human character. The book demonstrates how thirst for gold's twin uses - adornment and currency - has driven humankind to countless atrocities. This volume is so elegantly written that it deserves its own gold-leaf pages. Bernstein traces the transformation of gold into money, beginning at the dawn of historic time and ending by asking if gold will ever again recover its status as the standard for establishing the value of money. We [...] highly recommend this fine book for anyone fascinated by all that glitters, and for students of economic history as well.

Bernstein's The Power of Gold has moved from #3732 (9/22/00)to #94 (9/27/00)in Amazon sales rank!--this is simply amazing for a book on the yellow metal which has supposedly lost its luster. Book's official publication date is just this month--September 2000. It may soon hit the bestseller list at this rate.

Bernstein tells a story which is shocking, gory, fascinating, and interesting. It has weak beginning and end, but great middle. Items are well referenced and footnoted. Bernstein does not have a pro or con view on gold as an investment in this book, but he seems skeptical of the current paper currency system and the gold situation. He does not believe that we have seen last of the gold story.

I think that any one reading the book will be motivated to have some exposure in gold as a hedge for the unknown future. Tales in the book describe the fate of those who failed to hedge and got caught up with the fads of their times.

It's just a lot of very old copies (we call it classics) of the Journal of Portfolio Managmt and no new ideas from these 2 good "authors" (they write nothing here). Few good, many unbearable articles for the ones that are solely interested in finance history.

This is an excellent book for those who are entering or who are contemplating the field of portfolio management. Provides basic to intermediate level readers to some of the more interesting problems in portfolio management.

When I first found this book (from the library, fortunately), I was very eager to read it. I've done a lot of investing on my own and have always wanted to learn about more sophisticated methods. This looked like a perfect read: A compendium of original essays by distinguished academics and investors in the field. While the first few chapters made sense, I found that the book became increasingly complex. This is surprising, since I have a background in statistics, investing, and have a reasonable proficiency in mathematics. The authors rarely strayed from heavily academic prose, laden with undefined financial terms (only one chapter has a glossary). The book doesn't flow at all -- it doesn't progress from simple to advanced topics. I would have rather read a book by one author.

That doesn't make this a bad book. I imagine that these authors have made some profound insights in this tome, but my definition of a good book isn't one that has genius locked up behind dense language. Until the Portable MBA series comes out with a primer, I'll be searching for books that provide richer and more thorough explanations of their subjects.