Barron's Guide to Making Investment Decisions, Revised and Expanded

Rating:
Summary: Excellent primer - will surely get you up on your feet quick
Review: Highly recommended book. Besides a very pragmatic approach and rudimentary explainations of the basics the excellent feature about this book is the "further reading" section. It helped me discover "security analysis by graham and dodd". Just for that I'd pay many time over for this book.

The book itself explains things for the lay-person in non-complicated language. Sections on stocks, bonds and high level elementary strategies are also explained. Enough to get you started. What is best about this book is that you can read this book, buy a newspaper and get started.

Highly recommended. Buy the book.

Rating:
Summary: excellent reference, good 'big-picture' book
Review: I'm not sure what a 'beginning investor' is, but I used to have some investments, then suddenly had to deal with a lot more money. At that point, I read a number of these what-to-do-with-your-money type of books, and this one was far and away the best. It's not about how to pick individual stocks. But it will give you an excellent perspective on how to think about your needs, your goals, and your asset allocation and really make a coherent plan for handling your investments. It is well-written, clear, covers a lot of ground, pretty solid and can be pretty sophisticated. It doesn't just discuss different types of investments (although the discussion is pretty thorough), it helps you understand how to think about them in the context of your own investments. This is the only one of these books that I still refer to for information. It should be useful to beginning and experienced investors alike. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Useful for the beginner
Review: This book is great for the beginning investor who is just starting out and considering his or her investment options. It explains the basics in clear language and defines key terms. However, if you are a novice or experienced investor and want more advanced guides to making investment decisions, look elsewhere.