The best biographies plunge us into the life and times of the subject with the page-turning aspects of a novel. They convey the facts of a subject’s life in a compelling narrative, and with extraordinarily famous people, in such a way that we hardly notice we already know many of the details.

Steve Jobs is very much one of those extraordinarily famous people. We already know much of the chronology and the accomplishments of his life, and from media we already have a strong sense of his personality. All the more remarkable then, that noted biographer Walter Isaacson has delivered such a fascinating, compelling and moving portrait.

Jobs asked Isaacson to write the book - he had already written excellent biographies on Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Kissinger - and Isaacson has used his considerable biographical skills to produce a fascinating, compelling and moving picture. Unlike many authorized biographies it faced no revisions or restrictions by Mr. Jobs. What you see is what you get, and what you get is a truly remarkable tale of a truly remarkable visionary, innovator, and business leader.

The book unfolds chronologically, and from an early age Jobs is shown to have smarts, moxy, and unusual personality traits. His string of business successes (Apple, NeXT, Pixar), and his string of product successes (MacIntosh, iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iPad) is legendary, but only time will tell if he accomplished his primary goal - to build a company that would last, a company that would reinvent itself and remain an innovative leader.

Jobs’ odd traits permeate the pages, but Isaacson is non-judgemental, and the book never descends into the voyeuristic sideshow that is a hallmark of so many lesser biographers. For one of the most successful business leaders in history, Jobs also had an unusual indifference to money. When Apple purchased a plane for his use, it was not ostentation, but rather an attempt to give some balance to Jobs’ work and family life. A small detail in a grand life story, but like so many details Isaacson includes, a telling one. The jet, modeled after one owned by his close friend and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, was modified to Jobs’ exacting design standards - the same standards he applied to Apple products. Ellison offers a telling comment about the jet’s completion. “I look at his airplane and mine, and everything he changed was better.” Not more bigger, not faster, not more gold plating ... just “better”, through design.

Isaacson’s biography will seem to the new, fresh minds of future generations even more remarkable than it does to us today. It is rare to have an authoritative and unvarnished biography of such a luminary, and it is difficult to imagine any other biographers adding to what Isaacson has written. Unsurprisingly, Steve Jobs is the best selling biography in history. A biography - the biography - that will be read for decades to come.

The facts of good money management don’t change for different groups of people; sound principles for one are sound principles for all. Further, we all succumb in one way or another to poor financial habits and decisions - and as unique as we each believe ourselves to be, there’s a burgeoning field of academic study called ‘behavioural finance’ that shows we really have a lot more in common than we think. The earlier we identify our foibles and manage our finances effectively, the better our chances of realizing our goals. It’s no wonder that whole sections of bookstores are filled with financial self-help books, with many aimed at a particular audience (retirees, soon-to-be retired, parents, grandparents, divorced, married, kids...), or focussed on a particular niche subject (RRSPs, RESPs, TFSAs, the Smith Manoeuvre, mutual funds, tax planning....)

While noted Canadian financial journalist, TV host, and author Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s previous efforts have been more narrowly focussed, her latest, Money Rules: Rule Your Money, Or Your Money Will Rule You, is aimed at a general audience. In fact, so well does it hit its mark that most of the niche-targeted books listed above could be removed from the shelves and replaced by this outstanding work.

Like the best coaches in sport, Vaz-Oxlade communicates the information clearly, gives an action plan, and then prods and cajoles readers to execute. If you are high school age or older, this book is for you. In fact, if you are within a couple of years either side of high school graduation, this is definitely the book for you.

Vaz-Oxlade covers the gamut: student loans; budgeting, renting versus buying, mortgage payments, mortgage insurance, holding your mortgage inside your RRSP, credit ratings, credit card charges, credit insurance, good debt and bad debt, giving your adult children money (don’t), pooled RESPs (again, don’t), RRSPs, RRSP beneficiaries, how to find a financial advisor, how to invest on your own, term versus permanent insurance, and even how to shop in a supermarket so you stay on budget.

The paperback edition is over 500 pages, but each topic is seldom more than a few pages. Further, the topics are not organised in a linear fashion so the book can be read for just a few minutes from any starting point - an excellent way to ensure that readers with short attention spans stay engaged.

In addition to being comprehensive and delivered in bite-sized pieces, Vaz-Oxlade writes in a very straightforward and casual manner. She avoids industry jargon, explains complex issues in simple terms, and most importantly comes across as unbiased. Nothing detracts more from advice than self-serving perspectives or comments; financial advisors dismissing DIY investors; former bankers praising the beneficence of banks; or insurance agents promoting insurance products at the expense of other investment options.

Vaz-Oxlade is the direct opposite of these shills. She is merciless in exposing the financial industry’s duplicity. Four examples highlight her tell-it-like-it-is approach:
1. consumer credit ratings are not calculated how you think (borrowers get a higher score by maximizing credit and paying the minimum balance, rather than by limiting credit and paying it in full each month);
2. bank mortgage insurance is a rip-off (a high fixed charge on a declining debt (the mortgage balance gets smaller each month));
3. teaser rates on credit cards, and buy-now-pay-later store offers, are lousy bets (card company/store gets you hooked and hopes you forget to pay, thereby incurring a huge penalty);
4. high and inflexible merchant charges are embedded in the credit card system (cardholders get 1% back in rewards but pay 2% more at the till).

Readers beware, she will be merciless on you, too, if you have bad financial habits and refuse to acknowledge and change them. Her advice in Rule #2 - if you are married to an irresponsible spendthrift - is as follows. “If the person you love isn’t prepared to change from money moron to something more acceptable, then they don’t love you as much as they say they do. Cut your losses and move on. If you’re already married to a money moron, see Rule #138: Protect Yourself from a Money Moron.” Tough Love, indeed.

Vaz-Oxlade misses the mark on a few of her 261 Rules (for example, she omits any mention of government guarantees for credit union GICs, listing only the banking system’s guarantees), but aside from this minor quibble, she has delivered an impressive work. Poor financial decisions early in life compound, making it harder for belated corrective actions to have an impact. The earlier in life this book is read, the better. A comprehensive, easily readable call to action.

Drive is a thoughtful, thought provoking, and engaging book that will be of interest to everyone. It combines the best features of a book challenging the status quo: an academic foundation free of intimidating buzzwords; clear writing; logical structure; and a message that is concise, entertaining, and educational.

The book is divided into three parts: a challenge to the commonly held notion and practice that we are motivated by a carrot and stick approach; an explanation of the three forces which really do drive us (autonomy, mastery and purpose); and a “toolkit” offering a broad range of practical advice. The summary concluding the three sections is very clever and effective.

Mr. Pink starts by explaining that three forces drive our behaviour: biological (e.g. hunger); rewards and punishments; and a third force well known to science but not to business or the public, called “intrinsic motivation.” Historically, once our biological needs were satisfied, we organised our work lives for structural efficiency, employing carrot and stick incentives.

The fundamental problem with the current incentive system is that, although it can be effective for routine or repetitive activities such as Henry Ford’s assembly lines, it is not well suited to more complex jobs. Because our tasks are more complex - no longer are we trying to increase the number of rivets per hour in a car door - carrot and stick approaches can distort outcomes, lead to unethical behaviour, or foster short term thinking, as we have recently seen in the financial sector. Worse, they do little to address the inherent satisfaction we feel from a job well done. Pink contends that to be effective in our modern economy, business needs to concern “itself less with the external rewards an activity brings and more with the inherent satisfaction of the activity itself.”

Specifically, he identifies three elements needed to shift workers to be more productive. First, we need autonomy over tasks, time, team members, and technique. Second, we need mastery of our work, which requires us to see our abilities as improvable, which requires effort and deliberate practice, and a recognition that we will never actually quite achieve it. Third, we need purpose - “goals that use profit to reach purpose”, an emphasis on more than self-interest, and the ability to pursue the goals in our own ways.

Pay, we learn, is related more strongly to the first two types of drive (biological and behaviour/reward), and above a certain threshold, the inherent rewards of a job well done become more and more important. Pink notes that “people who are very high in extrinsic goals for wealth are more likely to attain that wealth, but they are still unhappy.” Charles Dickens knew this intuitively when he wrote A Christmas Carol, but Daniel Pink explains why, and offers a legible prescription for curing what ails the system.

Daniel Pink has the final word. “The science shows that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive - our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to make a contribution.”

This book is different; already an important and oft-cited contribution to our understanding of financial crises, it will likely endure as both a turning point and a benchmark for economists and policymakers alike. Reinhart and Rogoff compile and synthesize centuries of economic data, draw both facts and inferences, and offer some predictions as to how the global financial crisis that began in 2006 with the US housing collapse might continue to unfold. A truly remarkable and important work. It requires some effort to read, but at the authors’ suggestion readers can skim or skip some of the more technical parts with no loss of continuity. In fact, those with an interest in only the recent financial crisis can read just the final chapters (13-17) and be well rewarded for their time.

Because it is primary research and because of its analytical rigour, this is first and foremost an academic text. Unlike most academic works, though, it is bereft of formulas and statistical analyses, instead relying on readers’ familiarity with a bit of (economic) history and geography. This is the first work to compile such an extensive set of economic data (sixty six countries over almost eight centuries), and differs substantially from earlier academics’ work such as Charles Kindleberger’s Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, Sixth Edition, which had previously stood as the best chronicle (i.e. not ‘analysis’) of financial folly. In Reinhart and Rogoff’s book, successive sets of historical data are explained and inferences or lessons drawn. As the lessons progress, we see that indeed it never is different; financial folly has endured for centuries and the card houses have fallen each time.

The authors identify four types of crises: sovereign defaults (domestic and international), banking crises, exchange rate crises, and very high inflation (above 20% annually). Each is explained in detail in different sections or chapters, with additional chapters focussing specifically on the recent sub-prime mortgage meltdown and some prescriptions for today’s policy makers.

With respect to recent policies, Reinhart and Rogoff note that financial sector deregulation results in increased risk taking, and state that “financial innovation is a variant of the liberalization process.” Banks’ self-congratulatory statements about the societal benefit of decades of new financial products suddenly appear in a different light; not just risk management tools (and profitable products for banks), but rather contributors to increased systemic risk. Turning their attention to the inevitable systemic collapse and resultant ballooning government debt levels, the authors note “on average government debt rises by 86% during the three years following a banking crisis.” While the debt levels may be alarming, it appears they are the inevitable short run consequence of a debt bubble.

So it’s not different this time after all: financial bubble, ballooning government debt, and then ... inflation? For those who worry about a recurrence of inflation, the authors illustrate the remarkable similarity over the centuries (even millennia) of currency debasement (the dilution of precious metal content or size of coins) and the modern era’s periodic high inflation. In their words “inflation and default are nothing new; only the tools have changed.” The chart accompanying this section showing 500 years of annual inflation rates is truly astounding, and shows one consistent pattern to the early 1900s, and a quite different one from then on. What changed a century ago to cause this shift; the advent in the US and elsewhere of central banking, the rapid development of our modern fractional reserve banking system, or perhaps the increase leverage?

A remarkable and thought provoking book providing a sweeping historical overview, thoughtful analysis, and relevant commentary on our current economic and financial situation.

Many books have tried to explain the origins of the 2008 financial crisis, and many more have offered advice to prevent a recurrence. The Bankers’ New Clothes is the clearest prescription yet to address the central cause of the crisis: the financial system itself, and in particular modern (overleveraged) banking. An outstanding book that should be read by everyone: politicians, regulators, bankers, and those with an interest in a stable financial system (i.e. anyone with a bank account, who pays taxes, or has a job).

The authors share their motivation in the preface; they had “hoped that the lessons of the crisis would be learned ... but ... were disappointed. There [has been] no serious analysis of how the financial system might be made safer.” They follow with a caution, and then their goal; “The banking system, even with proposed reforms, is as dangerous and fragile as the system that brought us the recent crisis. But this situation can change. With the right focus and a proper diagnosis of the problems, highly beneficial steps can be taken immediately.”

While the motivation for the book was the recent financial crisis, the authors focus much more on the structure of financial institutions and the financial industry than they do on the recent sub-prime meltdown. In one set of examples, Admati and Hellwig link the 1980s US savings & loan debacle and the recent “rogue” traders at Barings Bank, Credit Lyonnais, and JP Morgan to the risk and oversight structure of banks, and the perverse incentives for individual and corporate risk taking - the same structural issues at the heart of the recent crisis. They also expose the repeated obfuscation of banks and lobbyists, highlight the complicity of politicians, and on occasion correct misinformation promulgated by individuals who should know better (former Federal Reserve Governor Frederic Mishkin).

The authors’ explanations of how banks work, in particular leverage and capital requirements, is exceptional. They start with an example everyone will understand - a home mortgage - and link it to the gain or loss the homeowner would experience if their home rose or fell in value over the course of a year. The same methodology is then used to show how a bank would fare given a similar rise or fall in the value of its assets; gains and losses are magnified due to the bank’s leverage. An illuminating real world example is highlighted in their diagram of JP Morgan’s self-described “fortress” balance sheet. Using US (GAAP) accounting principles the very high leverage is apparent, but using European (IFRS) accounting principles the leverage is almost double again!

The global regulatory response to over-leverage is set out in an agreement called Basel III, which phases in over the coming years a new global agreement on banks’ reserve requirements. The authors ridicule the effort as as wholly inadequate: too vague; too easy for banks to manipulate (what exactly are “risk-weighted assets”?); too lax (3% equity to total assets); and too slow to implement (2019 for the risk-weighted assets portion). Their prescription: issue equity immediately or stop dividend payments (i.e. preserve capital within the banks) until the capital equals 30%. Harkening back to the authors’ initial example of a home mortgage, the banking system would move from a 3% “down payment” to a 30% “down payment” margin of safety.

Alarming, disheartening, and a call to action, The Bankers’ New Clothes could not be more timely or better written. Written for a general audience, the book explains issues and industry terminology very well, features outstanding examples and analogies, and concludes with specific remedies and an estimate of associated costs. As an added bonus the book features an unparalleled notes section, which at over 100 pages is a worthy read in itself. A truly outstanding effort.

An outstanding book on America's role in the world today, and its likely role in the future. Zakaria writes with a lucidity of thought and clarity of style uncommon in any field, let alone the politically charged subject of today's geopolitics.

As editor-at-large of Time Magazine, Zakaria has had both an exceptional perch from which to watch global events and ready access to the major players. A naturalized US citizen, he was born and raised in India, arriving in the US for his postsecondary education (Yale and Harvard). Zakaria's background, education and experience have lent themselves well to an objective view of the US that is absent in other non-academic books on the subject. Even Niall Ferguson's scholarly, edifying and entertaining books (e.g. Civilization: The West and the Rest) have a detectable political bent.

In his excellent explanation of the rise of British and then US hegemony, Zakaria affirms Ferguson's theory on the rise of the West, but he doesn't hesitate to criticise when he believes Ferguson is offside. He challenges popular misconceptions as well, including our beliefs that the world has an ever increasing number of wars (they have declined substantially in recent decades), that the global financial crisis "signaled the end" (a black eye for capitalism, to be sure, but not the end), and that economics is a zero sum game (it is not; all nations can benefit from the exceptional growth of some).

Though not central to his theme, Zakaria notes specifically the recent loss of global political capital under the Bush/Cheney regime with the Iraq war and other globally unpopular actions. It would be easy enough for any author to denigrate many of that regime's policies, but instead Zakaria compares it to the failed strategy of Britain a century ago as it spread itself too thin in defending its empire; a failure to make strategic choices rather than a difference of political opinion.

Looking forward, Zakaria notes the inevitable math of declining economic and political influence for the US as other countries grow their GDP faster, in particular China and India. While the US will continue to get wealthier, its relative power will shrink. It is here that he spends a substantial portion of the book, with separate chapters on China, India, and the nature of power and politics.

Zakaria decries the very western tilt of the UN Security Council, the IMF and World Bank - institutions tailored for the geopolitical mix of almost 70 years ago - and poses thoughtful questions such as whether one can be modern without being western, whether GDP is an accurate measure of a nation's wealth (for example, education is an expense rather than a productive asset), and how the relatively recent rise of nation-states might fare as linguistic, ethnic and religious groups gain strength within their borders.

Zakaria easily draws on scholars' work to buttress or prove a point, but never descends into the minutia, jargon or tangents that so often afflict works with political agendas. When he offers an opinion or states a fact, it advances his narrative without drawing attention or causing the reader to pause and question its veracity. When he is prescriptive, his suggestions are thoughtful and grounded in common sense and historical precedent.

Liberals and conservatives, Americans and non-Americans, academics and public alike will find The Post-American World 2.0 refreshing in its commentary and clarity. This book should be read by everyone with an interest in America's place in the world.

Reading this book and Kosinski’s first novel The Painted Bird back to back, it’s hard to believe they are by the same author. The plain wording and simple ‘chain of random events’ plots are similar, but the angriness and horror of the first book have given way to a breezy, whimsical humour.

Really a novella, “Being There” is a thoroughly entertaining story of a simple-minded gardener named Chance who inadvertently gets caught up in the highest business and political stratum. His simplistic, garden-themed answers to pointed economic and political questions are taken by his interlocutors and by the media as insightful commentaries, and his fifteen minutes of fame begins.

Like the television he has spent his life watching, Chance has no depth. As Kosinski tells us, “television reflect[s] only people’s surfaces”, and Chance has spent his life watching its depthless reflections and tending his walled garden. His actions are guided by the superficial behaviour he’s seen on TV, and his commentary is based on his experience in the garden.

Kosinski’s simple premise, delivered through a simple gardener, makes us reflect on the nature of our own interactions. Through the book we laugh at our superficiality and are left to ponder the way modern media magnify it. An effective and entertaining commentary in 1971, it is even more relevant and thought provoking today with the proliferation and portability of screens (hinted at in the novel with the TV in the car) and the advent of social media.

There are delightful ironies, for example the phrase “Let’s talk about life!” as it’s speaker stops to light a cigarette, and playful references (the estate lawyer, Thomas Franklin and his assistant Miss Hayes are from the firm Hancock, Adams and Colby - a collection of US presidents, a father of confederation and a secretary of state). Every scene, in fact, is a wonderful combination of simplicity and surrealism that makes us both smile and reflect.

An excellent book that is well worth an afternoon’s effort. Perhaps you’ll even catch the Peter Sellers movie version later that evening on the tube.

Kosinski’s first novel, published in 1965, is a powerful, thought provoking and disturbing work. The plot is simple: “In the fall of 1939, a six year old boy from a large city in Eastern Europe is sent by his parents, like thousands of other children, to the shelter of a distant village,” and through a series of circumstances he moves from one village to another over the course of World War Two. The boy witnesses and is subject to different (often sexual) atrocities in each village, and although the Germans and Russians are identified directly, most of the settings and characters are nameless but representative.

The graphic cruelty of war is central to many other books and movies - both fact and fiction - but because Kosinski narrates from the perspective and with the vocabulary of a young boy - vivid, horrific, and a bit fantastical, but simplistic - readers are quickly drawn to the book’s symbolism and underlying theme. The book’s title, Kosinski explains, refers to a bird that is captured, painted bright colours, released back to its flock, and subsequently rejected and often killed by its kin. It is the inhumanity of individuals and groups due to superficial (painted) differences, rather than the graphic acts themselves that prove more disturbing. And though the narrative viewpoint is that of a young boy, Kosinski’s personal anger is pervasive, again heightening the inhumanity of the war rather than any of the book’s particular events. If William Golding is philosophical about human nature, the breakdown of society, and our regression to savagery in Lord Of The Flies, Kosinski thrusts the savagery at us - not fiction on a fictional desert island, but fictional descriptions of real savagery set in a real place in our lifetimes.

This second edition features an excellent preface by the author. It provides detail about his personal life that is helpful to understanding why he wrote the book, as well as a denial that the book depicts his personal experiences. Particularly interesting is Kosinski’s description of the furor the book caused at the time in Eastern Bloc countries - the setting for the unnamed villages in which the story unfolds - and one is left wondering if the regimes were most upset about the graphic plot or the even more disturbing and damning theme.

An extremely powerful and moving book.

With its publication predating by a year the financial meltdown of 2008, this well written book about “the perils of financial innovation” promises an insider’s view of what ailed the system; neither a postmortem nor a prediction, but rather a detailed diagnosis of the corpus financius. For the most part, Bookstaber, a former trader and head of risk management at several major Wall Street firms, delivers a very entertaining thirty year history of financial innovation and folly. Over time, risk is sliced or packaged in ever more innovative ways, leading to profits for traders and firms, and ultimately and inevitably outsized losses for shareholders when a bet turns bad.

Bookstaber writes about the stock market crash of 1987 (outlining both the cause and his role), the rise and fall of bond giant Solomon Brothers, the financial colossus that was Citigroup, and the rise of hedge funds. He includes many interesting anecdotes, at one point describing an innovative product developed by UBS which readers will recognize as index-linked CDs (in Canada GICs) offered a few years later by many retail bank branches, as well as some historical detours that provide context or an introduction to the issue at hand.

Readers shouldn’t worry about the seeming complexity of the subject matter, as Bookstaber explains complex ideas and market mechanics very well, without jargon or condescension. Along the way he takes the accounting profession to task (echoing former SEC chair Arthur Levitt’s critique of a few years earlier), provides an explanation of efficient markets and the mathematical underpinnings of economics, and offers an excellent introduction to hedge funds by outlining different trading strategies and the importance of liquidity.

Bookstaber writes with wonderful turns of phrase, and more than once I found myself smiling at his witty but understated delivery. Describing the new market hotshots called risk arbitrageurs, he writes, “During the takeover boom of the 1980s, they were voracious, sharks that preyed on other sharks. They bet on who would take over whom. The most prominent names in this business included Ivan Boesky, who would later be arrested, and Robert Rubin, who would later be Secretary of the Treasury.” As we know now, Rubin would later preside over Citigroup’s risk mismanagement and its financial collapse. It seems the only shark with its reputation unsullied is the Long Island resident introduced to us a few years earlier by Peter Benchley.

Despite the excellent content and storytelling, I have a few small quibbles. First, and an issue which applies equally to the stock market reports on our daily news as it does to Bookstaber’s book; references to stock market point drops are meaningless unless readers know the starting index level (and it’s different for each of the Dow Jones, S&P500 and NASDAQ). All market movements should be reported in percentages. Second, history has proved some comments inaccurate. For example, Bookstaber’s comment that “mortgages have little in the way of default risk” may have been true historically, but of course has been proved disastrously wrong since. Third, his defense of hedge funds and their beneficial role in markets too seems biased, perhaps owing to his previous employment at a hedge fund. Hedge funds may well provide market liquidity, but their benefits and costs to the financial system are much more complex than Bookstaber pretends. Read for example the ongoing debate about today’s high frequency trading and its impact on the transparency and stability of markets; liquidity run amok, and to whose benefit?

Two larger issues, unfortunately, prevent the book from being truly outstanding: its divergent focus and its weak conclusion. Bookstaber may have been aiming to demonstrate our financial demon by recounting his involvement in various events, but unfortunately the high level of detail about the people involved gives it the feel at times of a memoir rather than a book with important lessons. Readers can skim much of the personal detail without losing any of the terrific content, but the lack of focus does detract from the overall effect. Bookstaber could have taken a lesson from Peter Bernstein’s landmark book Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk in how to retain only the important details and remain both engaging and on message.

Curiously, despite his chronicles of others’ bets gone bad, he remains confident that his own trades - shut down by senior management - would have paid off handsomely. Bookstaber’s hubris ultimately limits the book’s full potential, and after an excellent description of the symptoms, he unfortunately concludes with an unreflective diagnosis and an uncritical prescription. His prescription is for simpler financial products and less leverage. Prescient given the incredibly leveraged financial system and undecipherable mortgage based securities at the root of the following year’s crisis, but vague and unhelpful. He is on firmer ground in his caution to regulators (is he talking directly to Alan Greenspan here?) that “it may be dangerous to assume that institutions behave rationally,” and more solid ground still when, after introducing the notion of uncertainty and the impact of observation on the outcome (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle), he cautions that increased regulation may be counterproductive as it could have large, unforeseen and unintended consequences on the market.

Bookstaber is an expert on risk, an insightful and edifying guide, and a first rate storyteller who has delivered an entertaining and educational and tour of the risk of markets. Despite the criticism noted above, A Demon of our Own Design is a worthwhile read and a welcome addition to our understanding of risk in capital markets.

“For more than a decade, Mitch Anthony has revolutionized the way financial services professionals practice,” or so says his website. The New Retirementality is one of many books, CDs, DVDs, newsletters, courses and presentations he’s produced; in this case aimed squarely at those within about ten years of retirement rather than at advisors, though it will be of interest to just about anyone curious about the (mostly) non-financial aspects of retirement. According to Anthony (and a good example of his writing style), “This book is a unique hybrid of the philosophical and fiscal examinations necessary to fully liberate our lives into a state of balance and meaning.”

The book has many flaws: weak analysis (the chapter on the sustainability of the US social security system is sophomoric); repetitive examples and phrases; some dated data (expected equity returns of 10.5% annually; references to current labour shortages); occasionally poor advice (contrary to his claim, good financial advisors will not work with people of any asset level); and an overly dismissive view of a “traditional” retirement. The book is a bit broad in its generalizations as well - for some retiring to daily golf is the ideal, as demonstrated by the boom of golf course centric retirement condominiums (Palm Springs anyone?) - but still Anthony delivers a very, very important message over the aptly titled book’s 250 plus pages.

According to Anthony, “investment savings are necessary to purchase the freedom to change course” and “we must plan ahead financially because we change our minds over time.” He further contends that we no longer want the retirement our parents had (work in a routine job and quit cold-turkey at retirement age to live an unfulfilling “life of intellectual atrophy, boredom, and monotonous leisure.”) “We no longer want out of the race. We simply want to run or jog at our own pace.” He astutely notes that for many the difference between adequate pay and poor pay is really a spending and lifestyle choice, and at the book’s end offers a pithy summary when he asks “How much accumulation is enough?”

What Anthony does so well is frame the philosophical notion of retirement and get readers reflecting - through a series of questions and short exercises - exactly what it is they hope to achieve; a far different question than most advisors focus on with clients in their ‘retirement planning’ meetings. For example, unlike typical planners, Anthony ignores how many “C notes” one needs to accumulate, and instead outlines and discusses five “vitamin C’s” of successful aging: connectivity, challenge, curiosity, creativity, and charity. He also provides helpful guidance for parents (and grandparents) wishing to instill good values in their children.

Like many planning and self-help/self-reflection books, this one has the potential to be a strong guiding light for the right audience. Its weak style does not detract from the strong central message, though it may cause readers to skim parts as they catch on to the repetitive aspects. A blueprint for a life well lived.