I studied Ben Graham, Warren Buffett and Phil Fisher fairly carefully and came to this book after the fact. And I was surprised how thoroughly John Train neatly encapsulates the approaches of these investment masters. The chapter on Ben Graham may in fact be the definitive place to start one's study of this great thinker's initially intimidating body of work.

I'd give the book 5 stars, but the author sometimes uses finance terms loosely when clarity is absolutely critical (when he's describing key financial insights). For instance, in the chapter on Warren Buffett, Train notes that one of the ways Buffett distinguishes winners from losers via the balance sheet is to make sure payables are more than offset by receivables. Train's description appears to provide a key insight, but it's vague to the point of being meaningless. (He does it again in his follow-up book THE NEW MONEY MASTERS when in a discription of how Train's firm estimates approximate growth in unit sales from financial statements, he writes that he multiplies "the retained operating margin on sales and the turnover rate of gross operating assets.")

If you want to read a concise book about the investment styles and philosophies of historic "golden age" investors this book might be the one for you. Any student considering asset management as a career should read this one as well as The New Money Masters, its counterpart that highlights investors post 1975 or so.

I would encourage everyone to understand the difference from this book and its latter brother, the NEW MONEY MASTERS. This book is primarily focused on investors that became household names via the companies that are their legacy such as T. Rowe Price, John Templeton and Warren Buffett. Other notable investors are Paul Cabot, Philip Fisher, Benjamin Graham, Stanley Kroll, Larry Tisch, and Robert Wilson. If you want to know how the experts do it, this is a great anthology to get you started. Listen to the best and forget the rest!

Both of Train's books are in the form of interviews he has with them. Train's writing is crisp and entertaining, and his interviews uncover many pearls of wisdom applicable to any investor's philosophy.

The Money Masters covers the origins of the value and growth philosophies of investing that many managers practice variations of today. The sections on Ben Graham and Sir John Templeton both outline the development of the fundamental approach to valuation as well as its original application in stock markets throughout the world. Phil Fisher and T. Rowe Price represent the two most celebrated proponents of what has come to be known as the growth strategy, adding the additional rigor of another layer of criteria to the value-style approach. Warren Buffett stands as one of the first great synthesizers of the ideas of both Graham and Fisher, while other investors like Larry Tisch represent variations on one particular strand, in Tisch's case that being value-investing.

If anyone is interested in books on the people behind the financial industry read Money Masters, New Money Masters, Predators Ball, Money Culture, Den of Theives and F.I.A.S.C.O. 25 Investment Classics and Goldman Sachs: the Culture of Success are other notable books. I gave the book 4 stars because; while it was very concise and well written I didn't find any information within the book that was of great help to me. It was entertaining and informative but not ground breaking or made me say "AH HAH" or have that light bulb go off in my head.

Perhaps the best place to start learning about investing. Read the conclusions first, then read the book, then re-read the conclusions. Peter Lynch said he read this book 3 times. I have read it probably 5 times over the years (Lynch may have caught up by now). I would give this more than 5 stars if I could. After reading the Money Masters, then you may be ready for The Intelligent Investor (Graham), A Random Walk down Wall St (Malkiel), & Where are the Customers Yachts (Schwed). then start investing for real. VERY readable, VERY enjoyable, BEST insights.

i admit i didn't read the whole thing, but i believe i am not overly critical, and i couldn't stick it out. first, the writing is very awkward; as i was reading i kept thinking, this writing is intrusively amateurish enough to interfere with the story. In addition, the author uses way too many actual historical figures, which i think highlights the awkward writing, because i found myself thinking, "that person wouldn't talk like that, or think like that. also, the plot was, well, trite. not recommended

A clever mystery onboard the greatest train of all - the Orient Express. Woven in the mystery are unique details of high class train travel in another time. as well as real historical characters intertwined throughout. Sam McCarver's second novel surpasses his first. A delightful read!

THE CASE OF COMPARTMENT 7 is a fun book. John Darnell, the world's first paranormal detective, boards the legendary Orient Express and journeys acorss Europe with a colorful collection of fictionalized historical personalities including Mata Hari, an Eastern European crown prince, and Agatha Christie. Sam McCarver does a great job weaving fact with fiction, and he tells an excellent detective story. There are murders. There's intrigue. There's danger. There's heroics. Here's a book you should read.

I read The New Money Masters after the Market Wizards and the New Market Wizards. When I saw "winning investment strategies of: Soros, Lynch, Rogers, etc etc on the front cover, I immediately bought it. Like any trader who jumps into the market without a plan or thorough study, I lost this trade. Train tried to portrait what's in the masters brains but he failed. Even worse, his writing skill had been quite bad to convince me to complete the whole book. Well, how am I supposed to expect something from a 379 page book that carries 147 pages of appendix?

If you want to read a concise book about the investment styles and philosophies of recent great investors this book might be the one for you. Any student considering asset management as a career should read this one as well as The Money Masters, its predecessor.

I would encourage everyone to understand the difference from this book and its predecessor. This book is primarily focused on investors that became household names in the 1980s such as: Jim Rogers, Michael Steinhardt, Philip Caret, George Soros, George Michaelis, John Neff, Ralph Wanger, and Peter Lynch.
The prior book, The Money Masters, deals with Golden Age investors who, for the most part, attained their reputations prior to the crash of 1973 and 1974.

Both of Train's books are in the form of interviews he has with them. Train's writing is crisp and entertaining, and his interviews uncover many pearls of wisdom applicable to any investor's philosophy.

The biggest brand name interviewed here, for most, is Peter Lynch who ran Fidelity's flagship Magellan fund. Lynch pioneered a consumer approach to the investing process and invested using a hybrid of the growth and value style that has come to be known within the industry as GARP, standing for Growth At A Reasonable Price. Both Soros and Rogers have fairly interesting ideas about the nature of investing and the sentiment behind it. Both of them worked at Soros' Quantum Fund, which was the largest and most successful hedge fund for decades and left both of them extremely rich.

If anyone is interested in books on the people behind the financial industry read Money Masters, New Money Masters, Predators Ball, Money Culture, Den of Theives and F.I.A.S.C.O. 25 Investment Classics and Goldman Sachs: the Culture of Success are other notable books. I gave the book 4 stars because, while it was very concise and well written I didn't find any information within the book that was of great help to me. It was entertaining and informative but not ground breaking or made me say "AH HAH" or have that light bulb go off in my head.

sorry if you expected a how-to in 25 words or less; the guys highlighted within could think- arriving at creative solutions, work obsessively or at least- with discipline [ check out Rogers' work sheet in the appendix..], and were rock solid in their convictions .....

good to see efforts like these highlighted in the newest go-go era, in which for a lucky few- monster payoffs, quickly, were more common than lottery winnings. [ I know more than a couple who've gone from 15 to 500 in a virtual heartbeat, sometimes with no more conviction than : 'Sure, why not!! ' That's not how these people scored. Nor how most of us ever will.]

Regarding, Train- I'd be inclined to buy a book of his blindly; can't imagine him disappointing.

This book could have been much better. John Train's essays contain some interesting nuggets of information, but the overall quality is uneven at best. The book reads a bit like a first draft. With some better editing, this could have been an outstanding book. As it stands, though, it's a moderately entertaining collection of half-baked stories.

Financial fiascos are as old as the hills, but John Train has done a good job of selecting a useful cross-section of twenty of them for readers to enjoy. This book is an excellent graduation gift for an MBA, or for someone starting a new business. It's light reading, with humor leavened throughout, and the stories are memorable enough to stick with you as you make your own way in life.

The challenge and the beauty of this brief work is in the selection of which fiascos to present. Although many a reader will think of one or two scandals that were missed, there are enough of them here of various types that any one exclusion is not relevant to the presentation. This was not written to be a history of all financial scandals of all time. The organization of fiascos in the book is non-chronological, jumping between long stories and short stories in different time periods, offering different lessons.

"Fiascos" carefully dissects various overriding themes of financial scandal in its seven page afterword, which I will not repeat here. The book is also bracketed with an excellent foreword by C. Northcote Parkinson. I will just summarize that most of the scandals involve otherwise talented or intelligent people driven to do very foolish things, whether by personal ambition or under the influence of a crowd. It was noteworthy to me that three of the twenty scandals (John Law, the French Revolutionary hyperinflation and the French Panama Canal) involved France in a major way. What am I to make of this? France obviously had a difficult transition from its absolute monarchy into the modern era, and it appears to have been an environment ripe for manipulation. It may be correct to say that under authoritarian environments, whether involving governments or just corporate bureaucracies, financial weeds are more likely to grow. This suggests to me that China may be ripe for scandal as it continues its uneven road towards a modern economy (beyond those involving metals trading or banking that have already been disclosed).

In fact, the best antidote to financial fiasco appears to be complete transparency between buyers and sellers regarding what is being offered, and intelligent consideration of risks by those involved. This is what makes truth in financial accounting, to the extent it can be achieved, so critical.

One criticism I do have of Train's storytelling involves repentance, told towards the end of his description of the French Panama Canal fiasco [p.74]:

"[In the wake of the scandal] over a hundred parliamentarians were brought to trial, but a single poor naif who actually confessed was the only one found guilty.

...But there was a happy twist: on the basis of a legal technicality a higher court quashed the sentences."

Hooray for the "poor naif"! I don't know why he chose to confess when so many other guilty figures did not, but on the day that man died I'm sure his conscience was a little bit clearer for it. It's most difficult to "play by the rules" when the entire crowd goes mad, as these stories often illustrate. This dissent by the lone French parliamentarian is to be lauded, even if it could have cost him dearly as the sole bearer of guilt.

When the rest of the crowd goes against you, will you have the strength to stick to your convictions?

C. Northcote Parkinson provides an especially informative Foreword in which he briefly discusses the balance between investment risk and reward, noting that human error is frequently the cause of investment failure. Shifting his attention to this book, Parkinson suggests that Train "has usefully analyzed a number of these human errors and we do well to study his conclusions. Some of the worst mistakes have been made by people to whom the nature of their problem was entirely new. They lived at a time when the textbooks of economics had still to be written, at a time when the word 'inflation' was applied only to balloons. There are still such people today and they can be identified, very often, as folk who have plunged into industry without any previous background in commerce." Parkinson suggests that there are many different causes of financial disasters, with the worst the result of several causes in combination, such as confusion of purpose, overgenerous investment, and a mistake in timing. To these I would add "homework" or rigorous due diligence. Train carefully examines 20 of the most famous (infamous?) "financial fiascos" which range from "Mr. Ponzi and His Scheme" to "The Putrefaction of Juan March." He also includes an excellent analysis of two which have always fascinated me: "Xerox Discovers the Computer: The S.D.S. Scandal" and "The Fine New $6 Million Sydney Opera House."

Following the brief but insightful analyses of such 'fiascos", Train concludes his book with an Afterword which has special relevance to the contemporary business world. After noting that the syndrome that begets inflation and then unavailing price controls seems as old as history (e.g. Hammurabi's code in about 1745 B.C. and Diocletian's in A.D. 301), he poses a thought-provoking question: "Do we still treat inflation by controlling prices instead of government expenses and the money supply?" After all the millennia, Train suggests, an aphorism attributed to the Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna seems to remain true: "The world always wishes to be deceived: let it be deceived." Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Edward Chancellor's Devil Take the Hindmost.

Thanks to John Palmer from New Zealand, DCC Model Train users around the world can now learn how to get more out of their Digitrax products. This book is well set out in different chapters that cater for the basic user through to the person who is more technically inclined. Also included is a Glossary to help define most of the DCC terminology. I myself have had a lot of fun setting up user defined speed tables with the help of this book. Throughout the book there is a good selection of pictures and diagrams to further help the reader. Although it is geared towards the Digitrax user, I recommend this book to any and all DCC users.

My four-year-old son and I checked this book out from our local library. The colorful pictures held his attention while I read the interesting facts and figures. The book is arranged so that readers of various ages can all enjoy the wonderful world of trains. We've decided to add this book to our family library.

Certainly a good book covering a wide variety of disasters in the 20th century. Not all were high in death toll but were high in rolling stock losses or caused major headaches for railroad users. Four types of disasters are mentioned here, Collisions, Natural disasters, Structural failure and human error. Hope you like it!!

......or is it? After all, one design firm they profile in this book already went defunct. At least the book has the honesty to tell you that upfront.

Actually, I've been waiting for a book like this for some time. In my 6+ years of designing sites and 5+ years of doing Flash, I always try to stray away from the cookie-cutter, portal, hit-em-over-the-head approach so many websites try to do ala Yahoo. Considering the city where I currently call home, New Orleans, isn't the most sophisticated and well-educated city going, you can imagine how so many people here get so confused going to sites like that. Instead, I try to sell each individual website as an experience in which you really do feel like you're part of the atmosphere that the client is trying to produce with the brand.

TOT effectively explains this in full detail. Promoting simplicity in most cases over the whack-a-mole approach or the extreme simplicity (read: usability) of Nielsen. Kind of interesting then that Lenker bashes Nielsen BUT praises his partner in crime for actually figuring it out.

While definitely not your typical web design book (you won't learn Flash or Dreamweaver here.) The book is loaded with lots of inspirational sites and ideas to reinvigorate your mind better than any can of Red Bull could ever do. (Personally, I prefer 180 over Red Bull. 180's got a better orang-y taste....oh wait.....this isn't epicurious.com now is it?) I thoroughly enjoyed the book and i think it'll definitely get people talking.

Now let's just hope these ideas won't make us as bankrupt as Amtrak is........

Lenker approaches the subject of web design with insight and experience. This is an important book that needed to be written and now was the perfect time for it. The overall design of the book is great and Lenker clarify's his points with simple diagrams. I found the writting to be engaging and thoughtful. Lenker covers a lot of theory about how people learn and makes a good point about how web experiences are far more important then web sites. The web is still in its infancy and few have come close to utilizing its potential, but Lenker has a firm grasp as to what that potential is and where it can take us. This isn't a book about source code or how to make cool graphics, it's a theoretical approach to web design backed by the author's experiences and insights. Train of Thoughts is far from being a dry textbook. With usabilty experts like Nielsen and others dictating how the design of web sites should navigate, this book is a great counter point to there uninspiring approach to the web. I'm a graphic designer and I think other designers should read this book because it will help them better arm themselves against Nielsen and his followers. But it's also a great read for anyone involved with the web.

There's no doubt that this will be viewed as one of the most controversial books written on the subject of Web design. Even so, having just read some of the early reviews trashing this book, I had to laugh. The design community has been crying out against the extreme rhetoric of the usability experts, but hasn't had a solid academic rallying point from which to argue until now. Lenker comes along with some solid intellectual arguments FOR creativity and content development and people seem to be crying bloody murder. It would seem that a few nerves have has been touched!

Truly, Lenker has written an inspired work that draws from research, experience, and original thinking. Some reviewers are claiming that the book is poorly designed, but so far, not one critic has substantiated their criticism by giving examples of design principles that the book violates! Also, not one person has given any example of a specific point Lenker makes that they think is off-base. The reason? Well, my guess is that they haven't actually read the book -- these early reviews were posted two days after the book shipped. I've had an advanced copy, and I'm just now finishing it!

Sure, it's true that there's some room left on every page for imagery--it's called white space and this is a good thing. The reason is that Lenker was smart enough NOT to overwhelm people with page after page filled with solid text containing his thoughtful arguments. I did a quick estimate and it would appear that there are anywhere from 80,000 to 100,000 words in this typographically refined, full color, 1-inch thick, 9" x 9"
book. Yes it's a picture book suitable for your coffee table, but it will likely also serve as a college textbook. Imagine that--could making a college textbook interesting to read be a good idea? Must be why there are a number of people with PhDs that have written glowing editorial reviews for this book.

Make no mistake. This is not a Web design "show-me-how" book. There are no "step-by-step" examples. Why would there be? This is an online communications philosophy book (says so on the back cover) and presents theories and principles that are solid enough to go toe-to-toe with the one-sided arguments presented in Jakob Nielsen's "Designing Web Usability."

At the end of the day, if you're looking for something written at the third-grade level that you can breeze through in an evening of light reading--read something else. There are plenty of slapped-together-books for you to choose from. If on the other hand, you're looking for something to jump-start your work as a Web designer, read Train of Thoughts. This well conceived, well designed, and well argued book will challenge you, inspire you, and will teach you then concepts needed to design truly effective Web experiences (just like the title says).

What an awful approach, if the dog ignores a command you scare him/her into action by throwing noisy metal discs at him/her.

There are so many positive ways to train dogs there is no reason to scare them into action.

I actually had the chance to spend time at a seminar that John Fisher put on at the Humane Society. Before his death, he was working very hard to show owners/trainers how to work with their dogs and not use the standard dominance/punishment method. Unfortuantely a previous reviewer must not have read the whole book. You introduce the discs slowly and you are simply dropping them when you introduce them (from a distance of you knee to the floor, because you sit when introducing these) Later when working distance exercises you may toss them near a dog as a distraction...but nothing more. His video show the steps much better. "Training dogs in the human pack" As he states in the book, to get a better understanding of how the discs work he advises you read his other books, this book does not go into full detail. Overall I enjoyed reading Dogwise. They shaped the dogs behavior with NO aggression or punishment. They made the dog figure things out on his own and in a very short period of time. It's great reading if you want to undersatnd how your dog learns and what you can do to teach them in a positive way.

Dogwise is an amazingly practical guide to training. It gives an insight to dog psyche and is very easy to follow. Training a dog a command takes no more than fifteen minutes, that's my own personal practical and successful experience. You can also help your dog learn other commands based on the same techniques given here, you'll become innovative. The illustrations are great but the number of photographs should have been more. Whatever dogwise is a book that can turn your dog from scratch to a complete police dog in no more than three months. Take my word for it! I strongly recommend dog lovers to give it a try; they and their dogs will both be happy and better off.

First the good news. The art is beautiful. This is a lovely book. If it had no words, I would recommend it enthusiastically.

However...

On the first and last pages, the mother is rude. In the rest of the book, you can see that her son has been paying attention, because he is rude.

And then you get the politically correct dreck. "'I live in the frozen North and somebody wants my fur to make a coat out of, and soon there will be none of us left,' says the polar bear." Um, was my five year old considering buying a polar bear fur coat? No? Then how is this frightening scenario useful to him? It isn't. It's propaganda. It is the least subtle propoganda aimed at small children that I've ever read.

Gawdawful.

This is a great book by my favorite children's book author. Always somewhat subversive (one of the things I love about him), the combination of his sensibility and his wonderful, unique illustrations (also something I find lacking in most contemporary children's books) make his books a pleasure for adults as well as children. I think he is one of the few people who could pull off an environmental statement - so important for kids to learn about - in a completely graceful, artistic way. A tour de force, I give it to a lot of kids for their birthdays, and donated it to our public and school libraries.

Read this book with your child and you start a discussion about taking care of animals -- the kind we only see in zoos. Burningham's books are the best for pretend play!