"Garibaldi" by Christopher Hibbert

This is a very easy book to read chronicling the adventures of Giuseppe Garibaldi as he sought to unify Italy between 1848 and 1870.

Italy had been invaded by Napoleon and turned into three major states in the north, the centre and the south. However, the 1815 Congress of Vienna returned the conquered principalities back to their original owners so that Italy was a patchwork of states. Piedmont in the North was ruled by the House of Savoy. The Kingdom of Two Sicilies was run from Naples by the Bourbons. The Pope ruled the Papal States between these two. And the massive Austro-Hungarian empire ruled substantial chunks of Italy including Venice and Tuscany.

Garibaldi was born to a seafaring family in Nice (then part of France but soon to become part of the Kingdom of Piedmont) and then became a sailor. He became converted to the cause of Italian unification as a young man by the Saint-Simonians who preached, among other things, free love. His revolutionary zeal soon led to his escaping to exile in South America.

In South America he took part in a number of revolutions as various countries sought liberation. This was the weakest part of the book. He was known as the 'Hero of Two Worlds' but the book treated these years very briefly.

He returned to Italy after the election of Pio Nono, Pius IX, as Pope. This pope was initially liberal, granting the papal states a measure of self rule (and even railways!) but this back-fired after the pope's prime minister was assassinated. Suddenly an agitator called Mazzini (who started the Young Italians programme which was later emulated by Ataturk as the Young Turks) led a revolution. Pio had to escape his country and by 1848 Rome was in the hands of republicans. The forces of repression (French, Austrians and Neapolitans) converged on Rome, the French (whose Emperor was Louis Napoleon, nephew of the Bonaparte) getting there first. Garibaldi led irregular forces in heroic (and often stupid) attacks on the French; these were ultimately unsuccessful and Rome was retaken by the Pope.

Garibaldi spent years in honourable exile farming on a little island near Sardinia until another opportunity presented itself in 1860. The Two Sicilies under the Bourbons had become as massively repressive police state; they seemed as repulsive as rulers get. Garibaldi led a volunteer army of 'The Thousand' (ish) to invade Sicily and through the cowardice and incompetence of the opposing armies, conquered it. He set himself up as Dictator. Then he crossed the Straits of Messina and invaded the tow of Italy, fighting his way up to Naples. Again he was amazingly lucky. Not only did every possible bullet contrive to miss him but most of his enemies preferred to surrender or run than fight. When they did fight Garibaldi often lost! Finally he entered Naples in triumph and gave it to Piedmont's King Victor Emmanuel.

He then retired again but went on a number of trips including a tour of Britain where (on page 343) "he was taken ... to the Britannia Works at Bedford to see the new steam plough'. He was now a hero across Europe.

He was recalled later to fight in the war of Piedmont and Prussia against Austria that resulted in the ceding to Italy of Venice and then retired again.

Finally, in 1870, Louis Napoleon was defeated and captured at Sedan at the start of the Franco-Prussian war. This led to Victor Emmanuel riding in triumph into Rome where he set up Italy's capital at the Quirinal Palace, formerly the summer residence of the Pope, while Pio Nono locked himself in as "the prisoner in the Vatican".

Interesting asides:
In the invasion of Sicily a Neapolitan ship was commanded by Ferdinand Acton, great nephew of Sir John Acton who had been Prime Minister of Naples under Ferdinand I. The writer Harold Acton was born in Tuscany and claimed that Sir John was his great-great-grandfather.
A hospital worker uses 'chloride of lime' as a disinfectant. Presumably this is calcium chloride.
Garibaldi sailed up the Tyne to an enthusiastic welcome in 1854, well before he had become a hero for uniting Italy. This may have been when my ancestor was named 'Garabaldi (sic) Appleby'.

April 2009 368 pages

"The Boys' Book of Survival" by Guy Campbell

This is part of the series The Boys' Book, the Girls' book, Mum's book etc

It contains a mixture of advice from serious (How to Light a Fire, How to Wade through Water) to facetious (How to Survive a Family Christmas, How to Survive your Teachers). The tone throughout is mildly amusing as are the pictures.

Not quite as exciting as the Shackleton survival story I read just before!!!

April 2009, 127 pages

"The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition" by Caroline Alexander

This book tells the story of Sir Ernest Shackleton and his 31 shipmates who sailed the Endurance to the Antarctic in December 1914 in an attempt to land and then sledge across the continent. The ship got stuck in pack ice and they sat imprisoned in it till November 1915 when the pressure of the ice broke it apart. They then sat on an ice floe till April 1916 at which point the ice began to break apart and they climbed into 3 lifeboats and travelled to the nearest solid land, the uninhabited Elephant Island. Then Shackleton and five others climbed into another boat and travelled through the Southern Ocean seas to South Georgia. his was an astounding feat of navigation given that they only sighted the sun twice in four days and South Georgia is about the only landfall in one thousand miles. Even landing here was not the end because they landed on the uninhabited side; they then had to travel across the unmapped interior of South Georgia, over mountains and glaciers, to a whaling station which they reached in May 1916. This was STILL not the end because it then took Shackleton four months to organise a rescue boat for the 26 men left on Elephant Island who were finally rescued on August 30th 1916.

And no one died!!

This account was put together from the recollections and diaries of the men involved. The book includes stunning photographs from Frank Hurley who was a member of the expedition. It ends by telling of the lives of the men after their incredible survival, ranging from becoming a down and out in New Zealand to becoming Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Town and another who was Master of St John's in Cambridge.

It is an astonishing story of almost unbelievable courage and fortitude under horrendous conditions and a thrilling read.

April 2009, 203 pages

"Going Dutch in Beijing" by Mark McCrum

This is one of those miscellany reference books: full of interesting tit bits of information based around a theme. In this case the theme is "the weird things that foreigners do when abroad" but made pc by purporting to be a manual to assist the visitor in not offending his or her hosts.

But if this were truly so it should surely be organised by country (what not to do in China etc) rather than by theme (weddings, funerals etc).

It has moments of interest which make one wonder whether there is any truly worldwide culture and how some of the bizarre customs grew up in the first place. On the whole, however, it fails to develop any long lasting interest. Truly a dip in book.

However, I did find some lasting value from the last section which describes the general philosophies of various different cultures from the fatalistic middle east (Inshallah - god willing - bukra - tomorrow - ma'alesh - don't worry) to the saudade ('might have been') wistfulness of the Portuguese. But the best philosophy is the African ubuntu, the "deep sense that life is meaningful only if lived for and through other people".

"God's Own Country" by Ross Raisin

Sam Marsdyke, 19 year old son of a Yorkshire farmer, sits at the top of the Moor watching ramblers and the new people ("towns") arriving at the neighbouring farmhouse. In beautiful dialect he records the circumstances that led to his expulsion from school and subsequently lead to his friendship with the young daughter of the towns. A lad perfectly adapted to the Moors he has very little idea of other people; he is a primitive savage who is a lost innocent in the world of folk. He is like a fish, utterly at home in his natural environment but doomed the moment he is taken out of it. He just doesn't understand how other people think. Almost every interaction he has with people leads to disaster. Soon events build to their inevitable climax.

Although the plot is, on the whole, predictable, and employs mostly stock characters the novel is redeemed by the wonderful, faultless language used for Sam's monologue and which lends depth to his unique vision of the world.

April 2009, 211 pages

"In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote

This is a step by step account of a true life murder of 4 people in a farming family by two young men in Kansas in 1959. It deals with the last day of the family, the early stages of the investigation and the flight of the killers, the late stages of the investigation and the capture of the killers, and the trial and execution of the killers. It is incredibly detailed. All of the characters come across as complex three dimensional people. The overwhelming question is why these two young men killed four people in an attempted robbery that netted them less than eighty dollars. The character of each killer is carefully scrutinised as is the complicated relationship between them. Each is a young man who has been damaged both physically (Perry has has his legs smashed in a motorbike accident; Dick his skull cracked in a car accident) and emotionally (Perry's circus performing parents split up). Perry fantasises about get rich quick schemes, Dick is more manipulative. Although there is a strong flavour of homosexuality between them (eg Dick repeatedly calls Perry 'honey') Perry strongly disapproves of gay sex and Dick enjoys multiple relationships with women, favouring pubescent girls, and could not bear to think of himself as other than 'a normal'. None of which explains the killings but all of which makes one realise that these monsters are as human as anyone else. I picked out two quotes: "Nancy Clutter is always in a hurry but she always has time. And that's one definition of a lady." (p23) "Used to be I could eat anything didn't eat me first" (p279) This is a classic book: beautifully written; synthesising journalism and the novel; raising fundamental questions about the nature of deviance; psychologically probing what it is that gives us the characters we have. 

Highly enjoyable. Rated 84th in The Guardian's 100 best novels of all time. April 2009, 336 pages

Also by Truman Capote and reviewed in this blog:

• Breakfast at Tiffany's

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Autograph Man" by Zadie Smith

Longlisted for the 2002 Booker Prize and shortlisted for the 2003 Women's Prize.

The Autograph Man is Alex-Li Tandem, son of a Chinese doctor and a Jewish mother (and therefore half-Jewish. His dad takes him and his mates, Adam and Rubinfline to a wrestling match between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks; at the match his dad dies of brain cancer.

The main part of the book tells of a week in Alex-Li's life. It starts after a three day blank out following an acid trip; it follows him to autograph auctions and through boozy lunches; he travels to New York to meet Kitty Alexander, the old film actress he worships; he returns to London.

He spends an awful lot of the book drunk or hungover or on drugs or wasted. This became tedious. The rest of the time he is meditating on the meaning of life from a Chinese-Jewish standpoint. This also became tedious. I think the main problem was that I couldn't really like him: he was a self-indulgent waste of space. The book is essentially a drunkard's excuse for his drunkenness and we have all been cornered in a bar by some sot who wants to justify himself and explain the meaning of the world.

There are some enjoyable flashes of humour. "How did you find New York?" asks one character; "The pilot knew the way" is the reply. A couple of characters sparkle. There was one moment when one character posed a dilemma that sounded real rather than spoilt: what should your response be when you discover that someone has loved you unrequited for fifteen years; should you not let them love you? But basically I couldn't see the point of the book.

I preferred Zadie Smith's White Teeth and her wonderful NW. Swing Time is excellent as well.

March 2009, 419 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"A town like Alice" by Nevil Shute

This is a book of two halves. The first part tells of the experiences of a young woman, Jean Paget, who is with a party of British "mems" captured by the Japanese in Malaya and treks around Malaya under guard before ending up in a Malayan fishing village. During these adventures she encounters a captured Australian who falls "fowl" of the Japs. 

The second part tells of her adventures in Australia after the war and contrasts a quite businesslike description of the power of capitalism to build an outback village into a town with a somewhat sedate (by today's standards) love story. 

 The first part is compelling reading. The second part one tolerates because one wants to know what happened. The story is told by a quaint English solicitor who becomes trustee for the young woman. He is clearly a man of his time (I suspect he would have been old-fashioned even then) and this narration device is cute but lends the whole book a slightly musty air. 

 The author's style is very matter of fact. I believe Shute was an aeronautical engineer (who worked on the R100 with Barnes Wallis; he was English by birth but emigrated to Australia after the second world war) although he sounds like a journalist. He has a very direct, simple style and the plot is clear; there are no complicated literary mannerisms to get in the way. 

 It is clearly of its time. It is casually racist. There is a clear distinction between the white mems in Malaya and the native women, although here he clearly has sympathies with the natives; the white women who survive do so because they adopt the native way of life. There are references to Negroes and Abos; an aboriginal woman is described as a lubra and is clearly no fit mate for a white man; it is important to the Australian farmers that they have white cowboys because the abos can't be trusted. The most shocking event to my mind was the fact that the forward thinking businesswoman who set up the ice cream parlour deliberately created two counters, one for whites and one for "boongs" because "I don't think you could serve them [the boongs] in an ice-cream parlour, with a white girl behind the counter." 

 It is also slightly funny in its depiction of Australian speech with the swear words changed to "mugger" or "mucking" and the frequent use of (one suspects bowdlerised) phrases such as "oh my word". Finally, although it gets quite risque when she gets half-naked in front of him, they wait until they are married! 

 Nevil Shute is a writer I have never read before. He is very much out of fashion although he was clearly very much in fashion when this was published (1961): it was "specially chosen" as the 1000th Pan paperback. I am glad I have read this book and I would now like to read "On the beach" (read it now, Sept 2022) but I haven't missed great literature. 

 March 2009 314 pages

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"December" by Elizabeth H Winthrop

This is a classic modern American novel in that the detail is incredible. On page 5 we learn what is in the trash can: "cardboard, Styrofoam, wood scraps, newspapers, empty paint cans and oil bottles, and other rags like this one. .... The rag is flannel, printed with purple alligators." Obsessive?



The book is about a man (city businessman) and his wife and daughter. The action starts at their upstate weekend "cottage", in the snow. The daughter is an elective mute. The parents are tearing their hair out because of this.



The father makes lists all the time and gets on with jobs. The mother's conversation is a model of pointless phrases tossed out into the air for comfort rather than communication. The daughter (who is, OF COURSE, very intelligent) chose silence as a means of controlling her environment but is coming to regard it as a prison which she cannot escape.

But it goes deeper than these somewhat stock characterisations suggest. The mother is desperate that her daughter should break through her silence and mostly devises ways to try to force her, trick her or manipulate her into speech. Yet you cannot think of her as an evil woman, rather as a desperate one. The father is far more content to let things be and find ways of really enjoying his daughter. Other family members get involved: the mother's delusional and sometimes violent brother; the paternal grandmother who keeps horses in the countryside.

The child herself is aware that her silence is confusing, damaging and terrifying her parents and she knows she has no right to inflict this on them. At other times, especially when she feels she is being manipulated, she is furious at them. Thus, a typical adolescent.

It is well plotted, perfectly observed and it all builds to a most satisfying climax.

Excellent.

March 2009 373 pages

"Evita the woman with the whip" by Mary Main

This is the biography of Evita that got Tim Rice excited enough to insist that Andrew L-W wrote the musical.

It has some beautiful description: a pueblo "lies like a worm cast on the platter of the plains" and "encompassing as a cup turned down upon a plate and dwarfing the pueblo and man himself to insect size, is the great dome of the sky."

But you could hardly call it unbiassed. It wears its anti-peronista prejudice like a tee-shirt proudly advertising Tommy Hilfiger or Abercrombie & Fitch. Evita cannot do anything without being sneered at. About her only positive quality seems to be her drive and energy and even that is regarded as a rather manic outpouring of unbridled ambition. Thus: Eva is a bad actress who hasn't even worked out what an actress needs to make her good, she is a promiscuous slattern who manipulates men, she is vengeful against political enemies and old friends alike, she resents being sneered at by the oligarchs, she is totally corrupt and on the make and her charitable activities are total shams.

All this might be true. But she must have had something to get her to the top and to keep her there for so long. And she was adored. And Peron clearly adored her too and was prepared to share his Presidency with her when many men would have got rid of the awkward wife.

Aside from this continual negativity (and it sometimes sounds bitchy and snide) the book is mostly a good read. I got a bit bogged down in the details of Peron's first term as President and there was not nearly enough about Evita's final year when the cancer was killing her; the epilogue about Peron's return from 15 years of exile to Argentina was also too rushed.

There is no doubt that the Peronistas did an awful lot of good in Argentina whilst at the same time being a neo-fascist and totalitarian regime that out-mussolinid Mussolini. Main lists their successes such as the minimum wage and decent working conditions and the right for women to vote. Nevertheless they left the country beset by rampant inflation, economically crippled and veering from military junta to weak civilian government. That is why they wanted Peron back when he was basically too old and tired to do any good (he died within a year and was succeeded by his wife who therefore became the first Argentine woman President but who was NOT Evita).

Good book

March 2009 285 pages

"Maddon's Rock" by Hammond Innes

This is a classic thriller by a classic thriller author.

It starts near the end of the Second World War when the narrator is posted guard on a ship carrying silver bullion from Murmansk to England. There are a number of rather obvious murmurings in the crew which the narrator fails to understand. Then there is an explosion and they have to abandon ship. The narrator mutinies, refusing to enter the life boats because he considers them unseaworthy, and frees up a life raft instead. He and his companions cling to the raft until they are picked up at which point it appears that the people who entered the life boats are drowned, except for the captain and his mate and cronies. Back in England the narrator is sent to Dartmoor prison for mutiny on the testimony of the captain, from which he later escapes. Then we discover that all is not what it seemed...

A fast-paced read which draws heavily on the author's undoubted familiarity with boats and the sea and his Scottish background. There is no subtlety to the characterisation (the villains include a feeble homosexual and a Shakespeare-quoting madman). The latter part of the plot is a take off of Treasure Island with a Ben Gunn character and even the narrator is called Jim! Nevertheless I enjoyed it as a light rapid read.

Feb 2009 222 pages

"The Old Curiosity Shop" by Charles Dickens

This is the classic tale of the travels and travails of Little Nell and her grandfather who are hounded from the eponymous shop by the evil money-lender Daniel Quilp.

It has all the faults of Dickens. Cloying sentimentality and a virginal heroine who is far too good to be true. The evil monster is a disfigured dwarf (no political correctness in those days). The story line is nearly pure good against evil.

But it does have redeeming features. During their travels Nell and grandfather encounter a host of wonderful caricatures: the Punch and Judy men, the man whose dogs do tricks, the poet, the lady who owns the waxworks. Some characters have their own unique dialogues like the dissolute Richard Swiveller. There are some comic side snipes at Victorian institutions such as Littel Bethel. There are occasional glimpses of ambivalence: Quilp has a delightful line in being charming even whilst persecuting his victims (shades of Baron Corfu from Wilkie Collins Woman in White (?)) while the gradnfather is a gambler who steals from Nell and is prepared to steal from others to feed his addiction.

But I never really bought the plotline. Quilp lent grandfather money. Grandfather gambled it away. Quilp repossessed grandfather's shop but still lost money in the deal (how Quilp ever makes any money is a mystery because he never seems to DO anything). Somehow Quilp is the bad one in all this and grandfather is the victim. Ummm.

It contains one interesting oxymoron: a waxwork but robotic nun "shook its head paralytically".

Some interesting references:

• Don Cleophas Leandro Perez Zambullo is a character in a book called The devil on two sticks (1707) who is carried by Asmodeus through the air up to the steeple of San Salvador and there shown the interior of every private dwelling.
• At one moment Richard Swiveller, who loves beer, treats his girlfriend to a pint from Barclays. The Anchor brewery in Soutwark started in 1616 and was taken over by Barclay and Perkins in 1781 to become the largest brewery in the world by 1815. They merged with Courage in the 1950s.
• Dickens often hyphenates words which we wouldn't today such as brandy-and-water and bread-and-meat. He also uses the words somerset for somersault.

Feb 2009 508 pages

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland

This book reviews over a hundred psychology experiments which show people behaving in irrational ways. It is well written and amusing and fairly easy to read; it also gave me sometimes scary insights into how people can foul up.

I have become much more aware of how important psychology is and how clever some of their experiments are. They really cut out "common sense" and all our vapid saloon bar theorising to show you exactly how daft we are.

But it is much more important than that. Sutherland shows that irrationality is the reason why engineers make planes that crash and nuclear power stations that fail; irrational generals slaughter thousands needlessly, and irrational management techniques cost millions.

The basic error is the 'availability effect'. Our brains cannot hold much evidence at one time when we are trying to make a decision so we tend to base decisions on the evidence that is most available. Often that it what we have just been told so, for example, a salesman can manipulate our decision to buy by providing evidence in favour of a purchase while keeping quiet about the opposite. One really dark side of the availability error is that we tend to notice the unusual so we associate unusual people such as minorities with unusual behaviours such as deviant behaviours like criminality.

Then there is the 'halo' effect. If you're good looking, you must be smart as well, and athletic, and ...

Another example of irrationality is 'Groupthink'. People in a group tend to leave the responsibility for decisions to others. This explains why a crowd of witnesses is less likely to go to the aid of a person being attacked than a single person; each individual in the crowd waits for someone else to make the first move. But Groupthink makes management decision making very difficult especially when there is a leader: everyone tries to think the way they think the leader wants them to think. Yes men are dangerous. So are financial advisers: they follow the herd. Even harder for the leader is that he tends to think he is right more often than he actually is (partly because he only remembers his successes, partly because he ignores all the successful things that might have happened had he not led the organisation along a different route) and that people find it very hard to backtrack on a public pronouncement.

Making it even harder to change direction is the 'sunk cost error'. If you buy a case of wine at £6 a bottle and it rises in price to £60 a bottle would you drink it or sell it? Most people think the wine is still worth only £6 a bottle so they would be happy to drink it even if they would never ever buy wine for more than £10 a bottle. The sunk cost error is particularly prevalent with watching bad films or bad plays: "I've paid £20 a ticket for this so I will sit through 3 hours of boredom rather than quitting at half time" although £20 and 1.5 hours boredom would be better than £20 and 3 hours boredom. As Sutherland says: "the past is finished, it cannot be changed, and its only use is that it may be sometimes possible to learn from it." (p 55) and "all that matters is ... future gains and losses" (p 71). After losing 57,000 men on the first day of the Somme Haig continued to attack... Poker really exercises the sunk cost error

A counterintuitive experiment is the one that found that paying for an altruistic act (such as giving blood) makes people devalue the act and makes them less likely to repeat it. Therefore school prizes are likely to make the prize winner value their achievement less (and makes the losers jealous). Sutherland points out that it is good for a teacher to give constructive feedback on a piece of work (as detailed as possible) but that grades are counter-productive.

There is the 'plausibility error'. When someone tells you something that is true you are more likely to believe his next statement. Liars use this trick. Advertisers make statements which will be believed by their target market (the example given is "dogs are just like people") before following up with less verifiable product claims.

People can't do probabilities. When judging situations they all too often think of the things that did happen and not of the cost of missed benefits of the things that might have happened instead (but didn't); this is an example of the availability error. People are dreadful about estimating risk and they are also over-confident that they are right: everyone from financial advisers to doctors over-estimate their success rate

Other irrationalities include:

• "the fallacy of like causes like" (p 133)
• Boomerang effect: eg Brexit? Cognitive Dissonance? "Once someone is strongly committed to a belief ... contrary arguments may only serve to increase its strength" (pp 35 - 36) 
• Anchoring effects (p 168)
• Failing to spot regression to the mean (p 210)

He is particularly interesting about cognitive dissonance although he doesn't call it that. He notes that "People strive to maintain consistency in their beliefs, often at the expense of the truth." (p 65) (an example is the halo effect (p 65)) and so "People try to prove that their current hypothesis is correct" (p 99). Thereupon "evidence favouring a belief strengthens it while when the same evidence disconfirms a belief, it is ignored: the belief remains intact." (p 107) which means that "anyone who has made a decision is usually extremely reluctant to change it, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is wrong" (p 95)

He proposes an adaptation of the PMI technique to make decisions. Write down all the pros and cons on a piece of paper. By each one write their 'utility value' (ie score how pro or how con they are) and their probability of occurring. Even if you just estimate these it will be better than intuition based on a few pieces of evidence. Then tot up the overall scores.

But he recommends as well doing 'multiple regression analysis'. This calculates the r score of each separate factor that might be used to judge performance (based on past records). In the future each factor score will then be weighted by the r factor; these weightings will then be totalled. He claims that this will always give better results than humans working by 'intuition' even though it is often rejected by humans because it doesn't give perfect results (further evidence of irrationality).

This was a fascinating book with massive implications for management.

There are also some wonderful snipes at a wide variety of targets:

• A uniform: (p 48) "may give people an inflated sense of their own importance"; "is socially divisive"; and encourages people "to behave in extreme and irrational ways"
• "games played between different countries ... far from promoting amity between them, will only foster animosity." (p 50)
• "'We can't do that: it will set a precedent' ... is wholly irrational. The proposed action against which it is directed is either sensible or not. If it is sensible, taking it will set a good precedent; if it is not sensible, the action should not be taken." (p 55)
• "America has become a nation of masochists who spend hours aimlessly jogging and deprive themselves of all but the nastiest foodstuffs." (p 90)
• "As a diagnostic tool the Rorschach ... is virtually worthless" (p 118)
• "It is impossible to learn anything about someone's personality from the way he draws a person." (p 120)
• "Graphology does little if any better than chance" (p 121)
• "A lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing - it may not increase accuracy, but it does lead to false confidence." (p 176)
• "Financial advisers on average do consistently worse than the market in which they are investing" (p 176)

It is rare to find a book so thought-provoking and at the same time so beautifully written. This was a pleasure to read.


Feb 2009; 238 pages