An entertaining and instructive blend of economic theory and personal remembrance.
Irwin, an agricultural economist, with Peterson, a veteran university writer, recollects a risk-taking youth and defends futures market speculation.
Irwin grew up on his father’s farm in Bagley, Iowa. Before he became a farmer, Irwin’s father managed grain elevators, and as a result he always keenly followed the agricultural markets. From him, the author inherited a deep intellectual interest in the workings of the market, particularly in the category of agricultural futures (“I was a market nerd from a young age”). He attended Iowa State University—his father planned for him to become a “superfarmer,” but Irwin became fascinated by agricultural economics, a subject in which he would earn a doctorate from Purdue University. Irwin tells three parallel stories in this eclectic memoir: his wild risk-taking as a youth, the nature of futures speculation as a kind of rationally managed embracing of risk, and his own experience as an agricultural economist defending futures speculation. This last element forms the core of the memoir: As a counterpoint to the popular caricature of futures speculators as “villains” who befoul the market through their “sinister manipulations,” he accessibly presents them as necessary and largely helpful participants in the market. “Futures markets are not mere curiosities, for they sit at the very heart of our economy. They function as a critical nerve center for the market economy and are important to everyone. Futures markets set the prices for some of the most important commodities in our global economy…” In the main, Irwin convincingly argues, they assist the market in the management and distribution of risk, inject much-needed liquidity, and, since they must contend with considerable exposure to financial danger, they enhance the market’s overall rationality. Irwin’s outline of the futures market is remarkably clear and should be comprehensible even for those with a modest background in economics. The text is written in an engaging, personal, anecdotal style that adds a human element to material that, by its very nature, threatens to become academically dry; it’s hard to imagine a more enjoyably readable book about the subject.
An entertaining and instructive blend of economic theory and personal remembrance.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9798987642474
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Ceres Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.
In this debut memoir, Bahamian millionaire Bastian offers insight into building a business.
The author was a millionaire by the time he was 19, an impressive feat considering he began his working life filling stockpots and rolling napkins in his father’s Nassau restaurant, a locals’ hole-in-the-wall far from the city’s tourist hotels. “In many ways, I started ten steps behind the starting line in a world where opportunities felt few and far between,” writes Bastian in his introduction. A poor student with a gambler’s risk tolerance and a salesman’s eye for an unserved market, the author dropped out of college to launch his own satellite installation business—the first of its kind in the Bahamas—eventually expanding into prepaid phones and other electronics. With this book, Bastian uses his personal experiences to illustrate the steps aspiring entrepreneurs should consider when building their own empires. “My goal isn’t just to tell my story,” he explains; “it’s to provide you with a starting point, a strategy, and the encouragement you need to take your first step toward something bigger.” The book alternates between memoiristic chapters describing the author’s youth and career and instructional chapters outlining the best practices to “become a lion” (his preferred metaphor for a brave, risk-taking captain of industry). From evaluating one’s skill set and choosing a suitable goal to the practicalities of regulation and taxes, Bastian walks the reader through the complicated processes of starting and maintaining a successful enterprise. While much of the advice is of the boilerplate variety, the author offers it with clarity and candor, devoting an entire chapter, for example, on how to fail productively. It is the biographical material that lends his advice unusual weight—Bastian’s stories of flying back and forth between the Bahamas and Miami to personally import satellite dishes are fascinating enough to stand on their own. Readers may be unable to replicate his success, but there is no denying that his tale is inspiring.
A rags-to-riches how-to as entertaining as it is wise.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9798891882485
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Advantage Media Group
Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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