Business Money Books

Prison Profiteers is a well written and concise book that outlines and details the spiraling costs of incarceration today. The costs are many and more then they seem as future generations will be impacted by what is going on now with the Draconian sentences and policies being adhered too. Prisons run for profit, this is American right? A very good book.

In his 2005 article "Correctional HMOs and the Coming Prison Plague," author Will S. Hylton writes, "It occurs to me now that prisons are designed for keeping secrets, for holding inside not just men [and women] but also their lives and the details of those lives."

In Prison Profiteers, Tara Herivel and Paul Wright chronicle hundreds of instances where prisons not only kept their secrets close, but let corrupt politicians and huge corporations make off with millions by doing so. The authors compile essays and articles dealing with the private prison industry from every angle -- mapping prison costs in low-income urban neighborhoods, the effect of prison construction on small-town America, the mega-corporations that run what passes for health care inside prisons and the politicians that shape laws to help themselves and their rich friends, with little care about those people who actually pass through the system. The bottom line in every article seems to be the bottom line. Much more energy is spent by public officials flossing the image of being "tough on crime" for public support so they can cut deals that will supposedly lessen budget deficits or fill their pockets than create actual rehabilitation services or safety within prisons.

One of the most powerful advocacy pieces is Jennifer Gonnerman's article, "Million Dollar Blocks: Neighborhood Costs of America's Prison Boom." It looks at how much money is spent keeping prisoners behind bars, per person, added up per city block. The total is often over one million dollars for one block, mainly in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, where people -- usually people of color -- have little access to education and good jobs, and there is no other financial investment in their communities except keeping them in prison. By mapping these areas within cities, activists hope to show legislators that the money would be better invested in education, job placement programs and other opportunities for residents.

Some of the most riveting essays were those that read less "academic" and were more personal accounts of investigative journalism, such as Hylton's piece on Correctional Medical Services, where he interviewed various personalities involved with the secrecy of prison health care. He opens the article with a visit to a prisoner with grotesque disfigurements due to health officials' lack of / botched care for his hepatitis, who dies only a week after his visit, reportedly from "unknown causes." He examines the numbers of inmates who have hepatitis -- which is highly contagious throughout a person's life -- and asks what is going to happen as they are continually un-treated and then leave prison with the disease. A pattern emerges as he talks to local prison activists, ex-nurses and an evasive public relations rep -- there is no real accountability for CMS's actions, beyond an occasional successful lawsuit. A nurse even admits as much: "We have no accountability. If I deny care, that's it. You have no recourse."

Herivel and Wright have put together an excellent compendium covering the numerous ways profit is made on the backs of prisoners. This is a highly recommended read, for not just prison activists but all concerned about the state of the "justice" in this country, the convoluted priorities of many public officials and what a number of local activists, academics and journalists are trying to do to combat these corporations.

I'm not usually one to read books like this, but since I am studying to get my Real Estate license, I thought that I would give this a try. This book turned out to be a great read, and very helpful for the field I am going into. It was easy to follow, and I highly recommend it!

I have tried to understand Reverse Mortages for quite some time from friends and neighbors, but felt as though I needed to take the next step and read a book. I'm glad I picked this one (actually recommended by a neighbor) as it was easy to understand, helpful and most of all, comprehensive.

This book was so helpful in informing myself and my parents as to the options available for them. It was easy to read and easy to understand. It gave many helpful hints and helped us figure out if a reverse mortgage was approriate for them.

Most of my family & friends fly by the seat of their pants financially with their children. This book reminds and clearly teaches strategies (at any incomne level) to raise children to be financially responsible, generous, and moral. It even touches on paying for chores, grades & when should you start allowance!!

It's a must have book! Great gift idea too. Remember the phrase "failing to plan, is planning to fail". You'll love this book!

Just as money issues become a source of heartache and conflict within marriages, it often becomes a wedge between parents and their children. Kids who grow up with highly charged attitudes towards money often have a hard time in managing their finances with larger goals in mind. Chaotic finances are too often a contributor to chaos and pain in personal lives, as well.

Eileen and Jon Gallo stress being an intelligent parent first. Communication, appropriate teaching, example, and trust are the basis of a sound parent-child bond. In this book, they stress teaching healthy attitudes and approaches to personal finance because too many lives get sidetracked when money is handled poorly.

Rather than providing a book of tips on building a financial empire or guiding your children into careers on Wall Street, this book is about everyday lives. It is for parents with children of any age, including adult children. And, especially, the authors stress that it is never too late to being. You will be better off starting now on improvement rather than regretting that you had not begun earlier and then letting tomorrow continue down the same painful road.

The book is built around eight sound and helpful steps:

1. Encourage a work ethic
2. Get your money stories straight
3. Facilitate financial reflection
4. Become a charitable family
5. Teach financial literacy
6. Be aware of the values you model
7. Moderate your extreme money tendencies
8. Talk about the tough topics

I especially like they way each of these principles is handled. Not only do the authors discuss each principle, they also provide help in approaches to understanding your own example and how to create teaching opportunities with your child. It is a very practical book. It also has a very supportive tone that focuses on lifting everyone involved in these exercises in improvement.

Money is a part of everyone's life and ignoring it will not make it go away but will almost certainly make circumstances worse. Bad news collects interest over time and becomes an ever larger problem that will eventually have to be solved. Better to start on the right path and keep things in a healthy mode with a positive perspective.

This book can be a real help.

I just finished reading this book and loved it! The concepts presented in this book really helped me figure out how to integrate the concepts of financial success with raising my child. I can't imagine a better gift to give my daughter than helping her to be financially responsible. Imagine how different the world would be if everybody read this and encouraged this behavior their children! Exactly the kind of inspiration I needed with a new child.

This book was intended to argue against Friedman's monetary description of the Great Depression. However, it is hard to say that Temin responded to Friedman's main contention properly. For, while Friedman maintained that the Depression could have been alleviated had there been some appropriate actions of the Fed (namely, policies related to monetary expansion), Temin's response was composed of two parts which kill each other's clarity; namely, (A) there was no monetary constraint before September 1931: however, (B) we cannot say whether or not macroeconomic policies which were not used then could have been effective if they were actually used. At the same time, Temin's logic which made him say (A) above is based upon a coarse (and probably wrong) interpretation of Friedman's another article, ''Money and Business Cycles''. Nonetheless, I have to be fair to add that this book is one of good materials to examine Friedman's position from various points of views.

Peter Temin's answer to the title of his book is NO.
He explains clearly the two main hypotheses concerning the Great Depression.
First, the money hypothesis (Friedman & Schwartz), which states that the collapse of the banking system was the primary cause. The fall in consumption and investment were a result of the Depression.
Secondly, the spending hypothesis, which states that a fall in consumer spending was the prime cause. The banking crisis was a result of the Depression.
The author shows clearly that the banking panic was also caused by high-level fraud.
The spending collapse was caused by a fall in income (wages), to a lesser extent by a decline in wealth (the stock market crash) and a fall in consumer sentiment (bad expectations). It influenced negatively the residential construction market and via the textile industry, agriculture (a steep fall in cotton prices). The ultimate result was huge unemployment.
The Depression was also aggravated by international events. A steep depression in Europe caused a fall in exports.
The Federal reserve did nothing to stem the decline by e.g. an expansionary fiscal policy. On the contrary, it chose to raise interest rates in order to preserve the international value of the dollar during the European currency crisis.

Peter Temin's book is an important and extremely balanced econometric study. It could be rather difficult for the layman, although the author thinks otherwise.

The author of this book makes keeping track of your money with Money 2004 easy to understand. It tells you how to set up your account, pay bills online, and even create monthly reports. There's even a part on tracking your investments, planning for the future, and preparing for tax time. I recommend this book to anyone who has Money 2004!

I have been using Microsoft Money to manage my finances and portfolio since 1999. I thought I knew how to use it until I began reading this book. Mr. Weverka has shown me how little I really new about the capabilities and ease of use of this excellent program. It is written so that ordinary people such as myself can easily understand it, with touches of humor to lighten the tedium. Thank you, Peter Weverka!

SUMMARY: A potentially useful concept taken to ridiculous extremes.

The main theme is around the concept of *potential profit* offered by a particular market. When building automated trading strategies or evaluating human trader performance, the problem could be decomposed into a product of some intrinsic profit offered by the market and the percentage of that profit that is captured by a particular trader or strategy. This book spends most of its attention on the former factor and various derived performance metrics.

*Potential profit* is defined by an idealized strategy that has *perfect foresight about all future prices over a given time interval*. In addition to the original concept apparently suggested by Robert Pardo, the book's definition is made more realistic by constraining such a strategy with non-zero transaction costs. Although this connection is not made by the author, the concept is related to those used in offline algorithms and competitive analysis (see, for example, Online Computation and Competitive Analysis): in essence, you want to quantify the amount of *regret* you experience comparing your performance to that of a perfect adversary or algorithm that is allowed to solve the offline version of the same problem (with all of the future data available at the outset).

Three iterations of potential profit algorithms are introduced:

1. "r-/l-algorithms": position size is constrained with a given maximum. The perfect strategy can be proven to be pure reversal -- except for initial and final transactions, the maximum profit is obtained by always switching positions between +max_size and -max_size at certain transaction points. Although the underlying problem could be solved using a generic optimizer, Salov introduces a concept of *s-intervals* that makes it easy to see how the global maximum can be computed with a simple linear algorithm. This algorithm offers conceptual elegance of solving its related problem exactly -- the later two are heuristic improvements for less constrained versions of the problem.

2. "first P&L reserve algorithm": strategy remains a pure reversal strategy but position size is allowed to vary subject only to self-financing/account margin/buying power constraints. #2 can improve on #1 due to increases in account buying power after the initial entry/exit transactions.

3. "second P&L reserve algorithm": same as #2 but the strategy is allowed to change existing positions in between the transaction points used by #1 and #2, i.e. the strategy is no longer pure reversal. Again, #3 can improve on #1 due to increases in account buying power during trading.

Since both #2 and #3 consider how account equity grows over time subject to self-financing restrictions, connections to Kelly/Shannon
maximum growth rate formulas arise naturally. In later chapters, all algorithms are used to derive performance metrics and to compare potential profits offered by various markets using real-life price data.

Unfortunately, in my view the author should have stopped at #1 and not gone on for 180 more pages. Granted, the overall approach of comparing your actual performance to that of some idealized benchmark strategy is extremely sound and useful. As a benchmark, a single simple idealized strategy is sufficient. But the author does not emphasize enough that the single biggest advantage the idealized strategy has is the perfect knowledge of future prices. Algorithm #1 already has this advantage built in and there seems to be little practical value in gleaning further incremental benefits by adding optimal account growth heuristics. (Optimizing position sizes can't be done in real-life without simultaneously controlling risk etc.) In fact, the last chapter has a cocoa contract example making 13000% returns in just 5 days! Similarly, in some examples algorithms #2 and #3 manage to grow exponentially into such large position sizes that they overflow a 32-bit integer -- it is surprising that the author does not see the ridiculousness of that and reluctantly suggests that the algorithms should be applied to "short time intervals" or "with high transaction costs".

Other book shortcomings that seemed glaring to me:

- only deterministic strategies are considered. Real-life strategies have to incorporate uncertainty modeling in their decisioning. Furthermore, deterministic-only strategies can't reach Nash equilibria for some problems.

- only two commission cost models are considered: fixed per transaction and cost as a function of instrument price. Something like cost/share would invalidate much of the discussion.

- because they have perfect price foresight all idealized algorithms unavoidably go wild on max'ing out position sizes. In real life, risk management constraints on open positions can kick in sooner than margin constraints, unless you are diversified across many positions (situation not considered in the book).

- after observing how much the transaction costs can impact these idealized strategies, the author nonetheless goes on and makes very ballpark guesses about slippage etc -- it seems incongruent after all that energy spent on perfecting those strategies.

I am a professional mathematician with a personal interest in mathematical finance and I know the author. I did not expect Dr. Salov to be writing a book but eventually I became one of the first readers. The book focuses on modeling and calculation of the potential profit - a new and fascinating market property. It also contains a gentle introduction explaining basic trading, financial and programming terms and helping better to understand the main topic. Therefore, the book should be interesting for all market participants: trading system developer, trader, theoretician working on finance or someone who wishes to learn the field of trading systems and quantitative finance.

It is interesting that the potential profit, as introduced by Robert Pardo, corresponds to a classical notion of a total variation of a function, the function being the time sequence of prices of a commodity. Computation of the potential profit in the presence of e.g. transaction costs becomes a sophisticated mathematical problem which Dr. Salov solves using the newly suggested r- and l-algorithms. In a systematic way, the author introduces s-function, s-matrix, polarity, s-intervals and proves their properties, producing an effective r- and l-algorithms.

While Robert Pardo introduced potential profit as a new concept, Valerii Salov brings this concept to a substantially higher level. He considers the maximum profit as a market property, which must be combined with a sequence of trading actions - trading strategy. He systematically comes the way from simple market and trading systems performance measures to a powerful and automatic tool filtering the most critical price events. This becomes possible because he takes into account transaction costs such as commissions, slippage, and others. A motivation for each decision leading to the complete software, new algorithms, or money management is carefully explained.

I highly recommend reading this book for anyone interested in development of trading systems and who wants to understand better the work of markets.

This books talks about multiple ways to earn income, ultimately leading to the goal of financial freedom. Having multiple streams of income is smart because it's risky to rely on one source when it could be taken away from you at any time, leaving you in the dust. Not only does the author talk about multiple streams, but if you are an employee, he talks about bringing value to your position. Keeping track of your finances and making every dollar count is also discussed. The idea is to create lifelong streams of income. The author also suggests to add at least one new income stream a year. What fantastic advice, which will ultimately lead to financial freedom. Wonderful book!!

This book sky rocketed my career and my investment
IQ. It is well written,entertaining, as well as informative. It is one of the best books I've read on business.

J. Wilson
LI, New York

This book is EXCELLENT! Very easy read with good clear explanations of ways to make money and make money work for you. It will change your perspective on finacial security.

Robert Allen hits the nail on the head here. I have 14 different streams of income in my business and it's the single reason for my continued success over 13 multi-million dollar years. Highly recommended!

This book has no shortage of practical ideas for creating other streams of cashflow.

I found the beginning of the book to be very reasonable. One pieice of advice I thought was honest and realistic is that you will rarely beat the stock market, so pick a mutual fund that tracks the S&P 500, sink some cash into it, and don't look at it again for 30 years, counting on the natural growth of the market to give you a return. You can take smaller amounts of money and apply them more aggressively elsewhere.

After that sound advice, however, Allen gets into more aggressive stock and investment strategies such as options. It is interesting to read about the approach and worth considering if you have set a small percentage of your portfolio aside for aggressive investments.

One thing about the book that made me cringe - and I see this in other places like "Money" magazine - is the fact that the author seems to regard the entire value of your house as part of your net worth regardless of how much you owe on it. A more honest approach to real estate investment is given by Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad" books, which point out, quite astutely, that any money you owe is a liability and therefore only the equity in your house is part of your assets. What you owe counts against you.

In Robert Allen's book, there are memorable quotes scattered on each page that are worth remembering. One of them says something to the effect of "if you think nobody cares about you, just miss a couple of mortgage payments." That is exactly the point. Your debt on your house is a ball and chain until you are free of that debt, it counts against your net worth. Most home owners are net negative, at least for a few years, before their equity and investments bring them past break even. As long as you owe that debt, the house isn't yours. It seems to me that Allen is glazing over that fact; I am certain he knows better.

Nonetheless, Allen describes how buying a home in a good neighborhood can give you a good return on your down payment, but it seems to me that he neglects the amount of interest you paid out of pocket during the time you carried the mortgage. Do the amoritzation schedule... if you buy an undervalued house with a reasonable appreciation rate, you could conceivably turn your down payment into a reasonable return within the first few years of ownership. However, over time the curve gradually dips below zero and stays negative until you reach a critical point where more of your monthly payment counts towards the principle and the appreciation of your home is starting to beat the interest. For most homes and interest rates, you only profit at the sale within a short inital period, or considerably farther down the road. And for anyone that has bought a home that isn't brand new, they know that the invisible costs of home ownership are significant - every paint bucket, lawn mower belt, nail, hammer, and vacuum cleaner quickly adds up. Your home is a forced savings account, but it has fees. Allen happily tells you that your house is your greatest investment, but conveniently forgets the small stuff.

Another thing that this book (and many others) fails to address is the following:

1. Rental properties require renters
2. Owning property for less than 2 years may stick you with capital gains taxes
3. Not every transaction is a winner. Nobody writes about the losers 'cause it won't sell books

Listing these items seems unnecessary but in the tens of books I've read on this subject, it seems to me that nobody wants to admit the dirty work. I haven't quite found the honest book on this subject that admits the dirty work and addresses the best way to handle it.

Finally, regarding a more detailed approach to the specific *tax* consequences (and advantages) to investing, check out Kiyosaki's "Real Estate Tax Advantages" book. It goes into more detail than Allen. Allen, however, offers more detail on tax leins.

I love this book for what it is. Some other reviers commented on the Stoic nature of the work. They are accurate about that. However, that is why I like it. The book isn't meant to say what's right or wrong or make judgements. The author does raise some ethical and moral questions but makes no attempt to answer them. As someone who has spent some time on the infertility hamster wheel and also has a background in Economics, I found this book fabulous. It is very dense, containing a very informative mix of economics, history and science. It is all about the market for babies.

Unlike so many books in this field, Ms. Spar does not fall into the trap of sensationalism. Of all of the books I've read on this technology and its impact on society, it is the best.

This was a very informative book, and I'm glad I bought it. However, the chapter on adoption glossed over the serious problems with the U.S. adoption industry. The book says that "adoption works." It may work for the baby-buyers and baby-sellers, but evidence shows it does not work well for mothers who are separated from their children by adoption. The book also implies that mothers choose to surrender their children for adoption, when in fact, most mothers who surrender their children to adoption believe that they have no other options, are uninformed about their options for keeping their child, are uninformed about the consequences of adoption, and/or are pressured or coerced to surrender. While the adoption industry provides privileged women with the choice of aquiring someone else's baby, it takes away poor women's choice to keep their child. See www.OriginsUSA.org and http://www.originscanada.org/adoption_coercion.html

The fact that this book is published by the Harvard Business School and the author is a professor there tells us much about how this topic is broached. The main focus of the book is on how the infertility industry (the baby business) and the market interact. Other vital elements, such as moral considerations, are barely mentioned. And this is where the book breaks down. Yes, the market side to the question is very important, and rightly needs to be explored, but taken out of a bigger social and ethical context, the approach comes across barren and empty (no pun intended).

Spar quickly dismisses ethical concerns, arguing that they are messy, controversial, and incapable of any resolution. Thus her focus is single: to see how the desire for babies fits in with the world of trade and commerce. And her premises are not easily gainsaid: people desire to have babies (and/or baby parts, or services, or technologies) and there are many who are happy to provide these things, especially for a price. It is as simple as that: supply and demand.

Economically speaking, as Spar keeps noting, it is a match made in heaven. This trade in babies is therefore inevitable and here to stay, she argues. The horse has bolted, and there is no going back to the stable now. We must live with the new reproductive technologies, and their inevitable commercialization. The only question is whether the baby market should be open slather, or whether some sort of regulatory scheme should be put in place.

The bulk of this book examines the various areas of the baby trade - be it IVF, surrogacy, sperm and egg selling, cloning and the like - and how money has been invariably linked to the fertility industry.

Of course this book describes the situation in the US, where there is very little government regulation at all over the fertility business. Other nations do have regulatory schemes in place, which the author refers to now and then. But it is the wild west of the American fertility trade that is in focus here.

Spar believes that the market will always be part of this industry, and that it is not a bad thing at all. But she recognizes that as the "product" in discussion is a human baby, many are reluctant to speak of it all in purely financial terms. She occasionally acknowledges the critics, like Leon Kass, who see much of the reproductive industry as involved in the commodification of children and the manufacture of life, but seems little impressed by their concerns.

Indeed, she says early on that the market will always triumph, while issues of morality will remain unresolved, and by implication, be of secondary importance. Thus she simply accepts the reproductive revolution and Big Biotech as necessary, inevitable forces that will not go away. Don't worry about the ethical concerns, she seems to suggest. Instead, given the inevitability of the market in this area, the only real issue is what kind of regulation, if any, do we want applied. The topic of regulation she only addresses briefly, and in her final chapter.

She in fact claims not to have any clear answers here. She does state her preference, a "light-handed regulatory regime" in which choice, information and costs are considered. She recognizes that there may be a dark side to an unchecked market, especially in some of the `yuk' areas like human cloning, but she seems to think the market as a whole, with a little help from the government, will largely get things right.

Thus she is optimistic about both the science and economics of the reproductive revolution. Many others, of course, are worried about the brave new world implications of where all this is headed. Spar here and there acknowledges these concerns, but generally sees them as irrelevant or of no great consequence. Of course such considerations are too controversial for many to even raise. Indeed, free marketers will be squeamish about such discussions. But they are nonetheless part of the equation.

Indeed, the traditional philosophical, spiritual and social implications are as much a part of this discussion as mere market concerns. So for a more inclusive and well-rounded discussion of these issues, the reader needs to go elsewhere.

But if the reader wants a simple overview and history of the new reproductive technologies, and their economic implications, this book is undoubtedly a good place to begin.

This is good stuff-if not juicy, and Spar casts a wide net that doesn't miss a thing: conception techniques, fertility markets, surrogacy, designer babies, human cloning, and adoption. The writer also has the guts to have a lucid, constructive point of view-never backing away from the controversial subjects many would balk about discussing. This book is a must read for anyone who might, is, or has gone through any of the processes above, and for the rest of us like me, just a great eye-opening read. In fact, I kept thinking as the pages turned: "I had no idea..." As a piece of scholarly writing it is immaculate (check out the pages of footnotes!), but more impressive is the fact that Spar's writing style is trenchant, entertaining and unwavering in it's ability to present a point of view to the reader. I wasn't expecting it, but Spar continually challenges and provokes as she weaves her riveting tale of the dynamics of a topic-both moral and technical-that is dear to the hearts of us all: babies. Wow. A scholarly page-turner!? Shouldn't there be an award for that? It's great read, and I highly recommend it.

Ever wondered where the suit and tie brigade known as corporate lawyers originate their quirky self-image? Well look no further. Lincoln Caplan's "Skadden..." is undoubtedly a modern legal classic up there with Michael Stewarts "The Partners". Delving inside the history of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher and Flom LLP is congruent to understanding the changed corporate world. From Joe Flom's initial proxy battles and rivalry with Marty Lipton to multi-billion dollar, cross-border transactions to the evolution of the new breed of corporate law firm. Skadden's history is inseparable from that of Wall Street and business in the US since its post-World War II founding and as a consequence is a must for all those interested in business as well as those interested in a legal career. A great no holes barred look into the modern law firm.

Mr. Caplan has gracefully provided readers with an exquisite portrait of the life and times of a twentieth century law firm. Compelling and balanced, the book joyfully tracks the highs and lows of a group of "young turks" who have defined what it means to be a lawyer in corporate America. I am grateful to Mr. Caplan for the time he put into this project, as it gives tremendous insight to law students as to how a law firm operates and what the culture of a law firm embodies. This book is worth reading, worth printing and well worth recommending. Caplan's Tenth Justice, his recording of the Office of Solicitor General is brilliant as well. Joe Flom and Sheila Birnbaum and the rest of the Skadden crew can rest easy as the bard who records their triumphs and tribulations does so with zest and intelligence.

Skadden is an excellent history of both the rise of the modern law firms as well as one of those firms which epitomized that movement. Lincoln Caplan uses an indepth analysis of the practice, politics and people of Skadden Arps to analyze how and why law firms, which had traditionally been small parterships have since grown into businesses as large and competitive as many of the corporations they represent. The story is very well written and insightful and it is obvious that Caplan did extensive research both inside the firm and in legal libraries. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in legal history and it is a good insider's guide to people who do not have experience in a law firm, but are considering working in one or are simply curious what goes in them.

There's usually something important to be learned by the absent minded habits of the great and powerful. This book includes one about Joe Flom: He likes to fill the margins of his notes with tightly wound, intricate geometric patters that are uniquely his own design. The author doesn't read much more into it, but there's no reason we readers can't. According the author, Mr. Flom can also be a little brusque in private.

For law students in particular, this book is a good dose of reality if they are wondering what it's really like to work in a big firm. Interesting critique of the usefulness of this book: I recently asked a Skadden associate (not in their NY office) how he liked this book, and he had not read it. He had to look it up on the firm's website to determine what I was talking about. So this book can help the non-Skadden population understand the Skadden firm perhaps better than the firm understands itself. That would be the ultimate tribute to the author, and a Delphic oracle to Skadden's leadership.

Since reading this, I cannot help thinking of Joe Flom whenever I'm trapped in some boring meeting, or sidelined in court, waiting for my case to be called. "Can I doodle as well as him?" I ask myself. Then the case is called, or the meeting accelerates, and--poof!--the evanescent reminder of old Joe Flom disappears along with it.

Augmented reality could be many things today. This book is based on the original idea - portable, ubiquitous computing with but a single user interface, minimized to the absolutely necessary adaptation to the human senses - and it's probably the most complete book ever written about it.
Does it really make sense that we're filling our rooms with more and more electronic gimmicks and gadgets, including boulders like TVs and PCs, obsolete and junked every 2 years ? - Read this book, and you'll definitely know it doesn't.
The author gives a thrilling survey of new ideas and solutions, all written in a very concrete and readable style, richly illustrated, understandable to almost anyone - which is mandatory, as it really concerns anyone. It's about the future of information technology, from right now on through the next decades at least, about what to expect and for what to prepare.
This doesn't get speculative at all, the author frankly explains and calculates realistic options technology will offer, explains all these new applications that will change our lives.
After an extensive introduction comes a fiction part, illustrating the impact on everyone's everyday life, then a design part handling all aspects of implementation including many new approaches, and finally there's a part about the future of media, especially regarding all the new capabilities calling for three dimensional productions. Some holographic techniques are introduced, for example, that I've never heard about anywhere else.
Don't expect extensive mathematics or even program code however. This is not a textbook (which wouldn't make sense anyway, because it touches so many different disciplines).
There are more issues of course, concerning such a technology that doesn't stop at the user interface at all. Ubiquitous computing raises essential questions. The author shows that computers will more and more become sort of mind extensions, so computer privacy is already getting exceedingly important.
Bottom line: This book is groundbreaking, very relevant, and a must for anyone interested or involved in modern technology.

This is not one of the usual popular science books - this is the blueprint for an entire technology.
The author manages to address both interested 'laymen' and technology experts. The design part makes up half of the book and may be more demanding to read, but even here he explains everything as simply as possible, with many pictures and without requiring any math.

This book doesn't just bother a lot with the state of the art, it goes straight ahead to new shores and explores the tools to get on. Several ideas are most probably entirely new. So the expert will profit a lot from this lecture as well.

One core thematic are displays, a problem simply taken as incurable by many other publications in this field. Without the clear proof that those ultra light, ultra versatile display glasses are actually feasible, the approach wouldn't work, so here it comes. An entire bunch of other technologies belonging to the complete thematic are discussed as well. Many more aspects of the case are addressed, everyday applications are treated extensively, the impact on media, security aspects, anything.
A complete table of contents and the introduction can be found at the book's site theendofhardware.com.

One may object if everything discussed here will really emerge this way, but as to feasibility and applicability, the author delivers good and comprehensive arguments, emphasizes ergonomical aspects, unaffectedly predicts that certain classical hardware like keyboards will seamlessly coexist with the new technology.

The really exceptional content and the way it is written - plain, straightforward, with lots of illustrations and explanations and quite some humor - are making this book a prime recommendation.

Klaus