Unconventional Success or Creating a World without Poverty

Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment

Author: David F Swensen

The bestselling author of Pioneering Portfolio Management, the definitive template for institutional fund management, returns with a book that shows individual investors how to manage their financial assets.

In Unconventional Success, investment legend David F. Swensen offers incontrovertible evidence that the for-profit mutual-fund industry consistently fails the average investor. From excessive management fees to the frequent "churning" of portfolios, the relentless pursuit of profits by mutual-fund management companies harms individual clients. Perhaps most destructive of all are the hidden schemes that limit investor choice and reduce returns, including "pay-to-play" product-placement fees, stale-price trading scams, soft-dollar kickbacks, and 12b-1 distribution charges.

Even if investors manage to emerge unscathed from an encounter with the profit-seeking mutual-fund industry, individuals face the likelihood of self-inflicted pain. The common practice of selling losers and buying winners (and doing both too often) damages portfolio returns and increases tax liabilities, delivering a one-two punch to investor aspirations.

In short: Nearly insurmountable hurdles confront ordinary investors.

Swensen's solution? A contrarian investment alternative that promotes well-diversified, equity-oriented, "market-mimicking" portfolios that reward investors who exhibit the courage to stay the course. Swensen suggests implementing his nonconformist proposal with investor-friendly, not-for-profit investment companies such as Vanguard and TIAA-CREF. By avoiding actively managed funds and employing client-oriented mutual-fund managers, investors create the preconditionsfor investment success.

Bottom line? Unconventional Success provides the guidance and financial know-how for improving the personal investor's financial future.

Table of Contents:

1	Sources of return	9
Pt. 1	Asset allocation
2	Core asset classes	35
3	Portfolio construction	81
4	Non-core asset classes	92
Pt. 2	Market timing
5	Chasing performance	153
6	Rebalancing	183
Pt. 3	Security selection
7	The performance deficit of mutual funds	208
8	Obvious sources of mutual-fund failure	220
9	Hidden causes of poor mutual-fund performance	270
10	Winning the active-management game	295
11	The exchange-traded fund alternative	313
12	Failure of for-profit mutual funds	341
App. 1	Measuring investment gains and losses	367
App. 2	The Arnott, Berkin, and Ye study of mutual-fund returns	369

Book about: Earth or The Real Price of Everything

Creating a World without Poverty

Author: Muhammad Yunus

In the last two decades, free markets have swept the globe, bringing with them enormous potential for positive change. But traditional capitalism cannot solve problems like inequality and poverty, because it is hampered by a narrow view of human nature in which people are one-dimensional beings concerned only with profit.

In fact, human beings have many other drives and passions, including the spiritual, the social, and the altruistic. Welcome to the world of social business, where the creative vision of the entrepreneur is applied to today's most serious problems: feeding the poor, housing the homeless, healing the sick, and protecting the planet.

Creating a World Without Poverty tells the stories of some of the earliest examples of social businesses, including Yunus's own Grameen Bank. It reveals the next phase in a hopeful economic and social revolution that is already under way—and in the worldwide effort to eliminate poverty by unleashing the productive energy of every human being.

Scotland on Sunday

(I)n Creating A World Without Poverty, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus argues convincingly that social business is an achievable way of exploiting capitalism to help the poor. Yunus moves the debate beyond the tired argument that the rich should simply donate to those less privileged, and demonstrates that the free market can in fact be used to the advantage of the less well off…This book is a must-read for policymakers or philanthropists, and its conversational style and straightforward logic also make it appealing to the layperson.

BusinessWeek

an inspiring volume, full of practical information for people who are motivated to try out his ideas.

Winnipeg Free Press

In this excellent work of popular economics, he tells the story of how he came to the idea and the impressive results it has generated.

Bookseller

The influential economist and winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize outlines his vision for a new business model that combines the power of of free markets with the quest for a more humane world. Includes stories of companies that are already doing social business.

Publishers Weekly

Economics professor Yunus claims he "originally became involved in the poverty issue not as a policy-maker, scholar, or researcher, but because poverty was all around me." With these words he stopped teaching "elegant theories" and began lending small amounts of money, $40 or less, without collateral, to the poorest women in the world. Thirty-three years later, the Grameen Bank has helped seven million people live better lives building businesses to serve the poor. The bank is solidly profitable, with a 98.6% repayment rate. It inspired the micro-credit movement, which has helped 100 million of the poorest people in the world escape poverty and earned Yunus (Banker to the Poor) a Nobel Peace prize. This volume efficiently recounts the story of microcredit, then discusses "Social Business," organizations designed to help people while turning profits. French food giant Danone's partnership to market yogurt in Bangladesh is described in detail, along with 25 other businesses that operate under the Grameen banner. Infused with entrepreneurial spirit and the excitement of a worthy challenge, this book is the opposite of pessimistic recitals of intractable poverty's horrors. (Jan.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Leading and Managing in Nursing or Andrew Carnegie

Leading and Managing in Nursing

Author: Patricia S Yoder Wis

Elsevier's #1 nursing management text, Leading and Managing in Nursing, 4th Edition, offers an innovative approach by merging theory, research, and practical application in key leadership and management areas. It is organized around issues that are central to the success of professional nurses in today's constantly changing healthcare environment including consumer relationships, cultural diversity, and communication. This 4th edition is thoroughly updated and revised to better prepare students for the nursing leadership and management issues of today and tomorrow.

Each chapter opens with The Challenge, a contemporary nurse's real-world concern related to the chapter's focus that encourages readers to think about what they would do in a similar situation. Possible answers are discussed in The Solution at the end of each chapter.

Every chapter contains numbered exercises that provide experiential reinforcement of key leading and managing skills and challenge students to think critically about concepts in the text to apply them to real-life situations.

Research and Literature Perspective boxes summarize articles of interest and point out their relevance and applicability to practice.

Theory Boxes highlight and summarize pertinent theoretical concepts reinforcing key points of chapter content as a quick reference for students.

Objectives articulate the chapter's learning goals, which are typically at the application level or higher.

Questions to Consider stimulate learners to think about their personal viewpoint or experience with the topics and issues discussed in the chapter.

The Application Activity section is a built-in,perforated tool to help students self-assess and evaluate their learning and understanding of the content in the text.

The vivid full-color chapter opener photographs and other photographs throughout the text help convey each chapter's key message while providing a glimpse into the real world of nursing.

New chapters on Translating Research into Practice and Thriving for the Future emphasize the importance of research in nursing, as well as the potential for growth into leadership roles as a nurse.

The table of contents has been reorganized to consolidate core concepts, resources, change, and interpersonal and personal skills.

Connie J. Rowles

This book contains content usually covered in leadership and management texts. The prior edition of the text was published in 1995. The purpose of the text from the editorr's point of view is to " . . .fill a need for a text that focuses on the nursing leadership and management issues of today and tomorrow in a totally new way." This book is definitely needed and most certainly meets the authors' objectives. The main audience, as stated by the editor, is the baccalaureate level nursing student. The editor is well-credentialed. In addition to content areas usually incorporated into leadership and management texts, this book also includes chapters on consumer relations and cultural diversity in the workplace. It includes many items to assist in student learning, including an extensive glossary, research and literature perspectives, theory boxes, manager's challenges, highlighted areas for important content, chapter objectives, and checklists. Color is used throughout to identify many of these areas. Inclusion of a student workbook with this text is a major positive addition to the prior edition. The workbook contains individual and group exercises that should help encourage student interaction. Videotapes and an instructor's resource manual are also available. No obvious shortcomings were noted. This is an excellent text, which is vastly improved over the prior edition. There are many strong graphic and organizational techniques that should stimulate student interest and learning. This text should definitely facilitate student learning more than other texts available that cover much the same material.

Doody Review Services

Reviewer: Connie J. Rowles, RN, DSN (Indiana University School of Nursing)
Description: This book contains content usually covered in leadership and management texts. The prior edition of the text was published in 1995.
Purpose: The purpose of the text from the editorr's point of view is to " . . .fill a need for a text that focuses on the nursing leadership and management issues of today and tomorrow in a totally new way." This book is definitely needed and most certainly meets the authors' objectives.
Audience: The main audience, as stated by the editor, is the baccalaureate level nursing student. The editor is well-credentialed.
Features: In addition to content areas usually incorporated into leadership and management texts, this book also includes chapters on consumer relations and cultural diversity in the workplace. It includes many items to assist in student learning, including an extensive glossary, research and literature perspectives, theory boxes, manager's challenges, highlighted areas for important content, chapter objectives, and checklists. Color is used throughout to identify many of these areas. Inclusion of a student workbook with this text is a major positive addition to the prior edition. The workbook contains individual and group exercises that should help encourage student interaction. Videotapes and an instructor's resource manual are also available. No obvious shortcomings were noted.
Assessment: This is an excellent text, which is vastly improved over the prior edition. There are many strong graphic and organizational techniques that should stimulate student interest and learning. This text should definitely facilitate student learning more than other texts available that cover much the same material.

Rating

5 Stars! from Doody

New interesting book: Starfish and the Spider or The Richest Man Who Ever Lived

Andrew Carnegie

Author: David Nasaw

and/or stickers showing their discounted price. More about bargain books

Economic Facts and Fallacies or Seven Spiritual Laws Success

Economic Facts and Fallacies

Author: Thomas Sowell

From one of America's most distinguished economists, a short, brilliant and revelatory book: the fundamental ideas people most commonly get wrong about economics, and how to think about the subject better.

Economic Facts and Fallacies exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues-and does so in a lively manner and without requiring any prior knowledge of economics by the readers. These fallacies include many beliefs widely disseminated in the media and by politicians, such as fallacies about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, as well as economics fallacies about academia, about race, and about Third World countries.

One of the themes of Economic Facts and Fallacies is that fallacies are not simply crazy ideas but in fact have a certain plausibility that gives them their staying power-and makes careful examination of their flaws both necessary and important, as well as sometimes humorous.

Written in the easy to follow style of the author's Basic Economics, this latest book is able to go into greater depth, with real world examples, on specific issues.

Publishers Weekly

The heart of the matter for Thomas Sowell (Basic Economics) is to ask, "What are the facts?" In his latest book, economist Sowell examines numerous misconceptions about life and economics. Sowell writes like an exacting scholar, but his arguments, which rely on economic analyses primarily, may suffer from oversimplification. Sowell argues that zoning restrictions and rent-control policies hurt those whom they're meant to help; intones that women earn less than men because they are far less likely than men to choose occupations that require very long hours; believes tenure helps neither students nor professors; demonstrates that even the poor have successfully moved up economically; tackles fallacies about race in America; and aims to convince that "there is nothing baffling or morally wrong about the fact that different nations have different per capita incomes." He falters in his chapter on the academy, when he becomes an advocate rather than an observer, and oddly neglects the individual choice available to students. Sowell's purpose is to teach readers to "examine [their] beliefs more closely and more analytically," and the conclusions he draws are certain to inspire rigorous debate. This readable volume is a useful primer exposing how economics relates to the social issues that affect our country. (Jan.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

See also: The First Billion Is the Hardest or Crucial Conversations

Seven Spiritual Laws Success: A Practical Guide to the Fulfillment of Your Dreams

Author: Deepak Chopra

Based on natural laws which govern all of creation, this book shatters the myth that success is the result of hard work, exacting plans, or driving ambition. In The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, Deepak Chopra offers a life-altering perspective on the attainment of success: Once we understand our true nature and learn to live in harmony with natural law, a sense of well-being, good health, fulfilling relationships, energy and enthusiasm for life, and material abundance will spring forth easily and effortlessly. Filled with timeless wisdom and practical steps you can apply right away, this is a book you will want to read and refer to again and again.