The Portable MBA in Investment

Rating:
Summary: Unnecessarily complex, despite credentials of the authors
Review: When I first found this book (from the library, fortunately), I was very eager to read it. I've done a lot of investing on my own and have always wanted to learn about more sophisticated methods. This looked like a perfect read: A compendium of original essays by distinguished academics and investors in the field. While the first few chapters made sense, I found that the book became increasingly complex. This is surprising, since I have a background in statistics, investing, and have a reasonable proficiency in mathematics. The authors rarely strayed from heavily academic prose, laden with undefined financial terms (only one chapter has a glossary). The book doesn't flow at all -- it doesn't progress from simple to advanced topics. I would have rather read a book by one author.

That doesn't make this a bad book. I imagine that these authors have made some profound insights in this tome, but my definition of a good book isn't one that has genius locked up behind dense language. Until the Portable MBA series comes out with a primer, I'll be searching for books that provide richer and more thorough explanations of their subjects.