This is a great introductory text. My only complaint would be that it's a little dated at this point. It needs to be updated in a third edition.

Since I bought this book, I have it as my desk reference. For beginners in this area, is a great comprehensive tool to help understand capital markets. For the more skilled financial readers, is an obligated desk reference.

Fabozzi and Modigliani take you in complete tour through capital markets. In the early chapters you will find valuable information about financial systems and institutions, about how the primary and secondary markets work, among many other issues.

Then the book explains debt and equity markets, finishing in the later chapters with great explanations on derivatives markets.

Definitely, I made a great investment in buying this book.

We have been using this excellent book on our Capital Markets and Institutions course. It serves as a very solid foundation on which to build our more advanced courses on corporate finance.

This inspiring book features some of the worlds greatest athletes and what made them the winners they became. The threads that weaved through all of these champions seemed to be visualization of the achievement of goals, commitment and focus. This is a great book for anyone that is looking to achieve greatness in any area of their lives.

This is a great Book! It is full of fun stories about great athletes & Coaches. It is easy to read, with many short chapters, each containing a story. In my opinion, this book is good for just about any age: teens through seniors. It is both inspiring and motivating. It really is a "WINNER" of a read.

I'm very proud of this book. We have discovered that it touches all of our lives. It is not just a sports book, but rather sports is the metaphor for living. Winners have the mind set to win, even when everything seems to be going wrong, they still figure out a way to win. It is fascinating how their minds work. I think you'll really enjoy What Makes Winners Win. ---Charlie Jones, author

The Pit was obviously not written recently. With its dated language and pre-PC attitudes toward sex and gender roles, it portrays a simpler time. However, when it describes trading and the risks of falling in love with a position and believing that the market is "wrong", it is as topical as the internet bubble.

While reading it, I couldn't help but compare it to Arthur Hailey novels like "Wheels" or "Airport", because this is the story of an industry told through the eyes of real people with their own foibles, loves, and idiosyncrasies. Laura Jadwin, nee Dearborn, tells most of the story. Her inner conflict between self-centered materialism and desire for "perfect" love forms the backdrop to the financial saga enmeshing her husband, Curtis. All in all, this is a good read but may move too slowly for some people--except for the climax of Jadwin's corner of the wheat market, which is as fast-paced as a Clancy novel.

The Pit is a story about the Chicago Wheat market during the early 1900's. Norris writes a historical / romance book in which Laura Dearborn finds herself in Chicago from Boston. Almost immediately, she is beset by a variety of suitors. However, she is most taken by Curtis Jadwin, a sophisticated businessman who is influential on the Chicago Board of Trade.

After marrying Laura, the conservative speculator, after making a nice profit on the wheat market, becomes obsessive over controlling it. As the story unfolds, his wealth grows in a short period of time and for a while he captures the market. Ultimately, though, the market corrects itself and he must save his fortune as well as his wife, Laura, whose love begins to flee from lack of attention from Jadwin.

I found this book very slow at the beginning. However, once the market traps Jadwin, the book becomes exciting and the pages fly by. Laura is a realistic character, although I didn't have a lot of sympathy for her - she come off rather spoiled and hapless. Norris's point about the addictiveness of speculating on wheat futures and the power that it has over the rest of the world is evident. A solid book and worth reading by those who like that period of time or are interested in Chicago's history.

norris thrilled me as a junior in high school with realism. "The Pit" my recent read some 17years after highschool can only be understood by someone that has gone through trading on some level. It wasn't so much greed but lust to trade. go downtown ny or chi right now and watch the faces of the boys/men /women and this novel will transcend time for anyone.

This book is an essential a textbook for college students. It provides all the basic materials about the futures market. But I feel it doesn't cover too much about the problems of real world trading. After trading for sometimes, I know that there are many tricks using by the professional traders. They are really important. They can give you edges over other traders. But they are seldom covered in college textbooks. So you still need to read other books or learn from other people before you put the money into this risky game.

This is clearly one of the best investment books written. The title belies the breadth of valuable market knowledge the book offers students of the markets.

If you are going to trades futures, read this book, make a few trades, then read this book again. It is a cold, hard look at the reality of trading. While just about every other book on futures trading assumes you are a gullible idiot, this one exposes the difficulty of the pursuit. Its depth and breadth are incomparable.

St Joan is one of Brecht's less well-known plays. Set in Chicago, it is the story of Joan Dark and is the modern version of the biblical story, Joan of Arc. Joan is a leader of a religious group, the Black Straw Hats. Throughout the play, she preaches to common-folk and the "meat kings" of Chigago, namely Mauler, Cridle and Lennox. Although criticised, her support for the needy is much appeciated. The play consists of lots of monologues, linked by short sections of dialogue. Joan uses biblical phrases and terms in her preaching such as "Oh ye of little faith" and words like "ordain" and "salvation". The structure of this play makes it ideal to be used for monolgues, after a bit of editing.

This play, one of Brecht's best if least known, is perhaps the first postmodern classic. It combines the dramaturgy of a tragedy and a comedy and a passion play. It makes an attempt (years before todays financial tv programs) to make the market and its affairs excitingly dramatic. This new translation by Ralph Manheim, arguably Brecht's most accomplished translator, does much to save the text from earlier mistranslations. This year (2001) there will be an all star performance of the new translation in Chicago, the city in whose Stockyards and at whose Board of Trade the Play was originally set. This could be the seminal Brecht performance of the year!

This fourth book in the Euripides series gives the reader another fairly rare play: Rhesus. Readable translation that is easily affordable with good general introductions. A bit too conservative in translation at points.

EVERYTHING you need to know is broken down in an easy to read, organized, precise manner containing the most relevant needed information on a topic.

This is a slim introductory book but not just another liturgy and art book. The author takes exception with including visual art as "liturgical environment" arguing that the visual language should be part of the liturgy.

An example of the direction his thoughts take us: the events in the life of Christ are appropriate for depictions on the church walls as they are integral to the liturgy; the stations of the cross are appropriate only in the season of Lent. This brings us back to the eastern rite iconastasis for the narrative material of the art, although he does not specifically make this connection.

A second example: he makes an interesting distinction between three dimensional depictions of saints which leave them in this world and hence are devotional vs. icons which depict them glorified and hence can be liturgical.

This is a thought provoking and practical book that should be read before any building or renovation of a church.

I don't really expect a lot from biographies. The facts are what is necessary for me. But I did enjoy reading this book about an interesting man of letters - an enigma in the alumni of American writers to be sure. Jones life is told in a cronologically fashion with many anecdotes and quotes given of this great writer and complex man.

Expect the unexpected. This book entertained me and made me laugh. The author has a gift for not only telling a story, but, making it come alive. He opens a window into life during the depression, while at the same time, bringing humor to the anecdotes he tells about growing up then. I thoroughly enjoyed this book!