An often-engaging guide that aims to provide a little inspiration for the novice investor.
The American Dream is attainable by anyone, says a lawyer and self-taught stock investor turned multimillionaire in his debut how-to book.
“Uncle Dom” Fleming, who often adopts the tone of pleasant, rambling dinner companion, was inspired to pen this thin volume to teach his young family members how they can become rich. Many of Fleming’s ideas—e.g., save money, get a good education, spend conservatively, and invest wisely—are hardly new, but he provides several common-sense lessons, such as stressing the importance of good sleep, and provides investment tips in brief, easy-to-grasp chapters. The author began life in a “middle class neighborhood of row houses,” where he learned the value of saving when his kindergarten class opened savings accounts for the students with a local bank and the dollars he deposited grew without any effort on his part. By the time he became a lawyer, Fleming had already adopted frugal spending habits and health routines that are now part of his holistic approach, including managing time wisely to reduce stress and using no more than two pillows under his head for a restful night’s sleep. “Looking back at how I acquired financial riches convinced me that factors not directly connected to finances were as important if not more so than the factors directly related to the money,” he writes. That said, several chapters do touch upon investing. The author discusses his own stock picking strategy—he favors well-researched small-cap value stocks—and warns against overreacting to good or bad news when investing. He uses the example of the 1984 Union Carbide disaster to explain why he bought stock in that company and why he prefers buying on bad news; going with the “herd mentality,” he writes, keeps an investor in the average percentile of financial return. Another simple, useful chapter breaks down a company’s “consolidated balance sheet,” a source that contains vital information for investing in a company and can easily be obtained online. The conclusion glances at several broad ideas, such as whether money can buy happiness. Although Fleming’s “guarantee” that following his advice will amass riches is a bit far-fetched, readers will likely enjoy his book’s personal touch.
An often-engaging guide that aims to provide a little inspiration for the novice investor.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1479394173
Page Count: 122
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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