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Book Reviews: Cocktail Parties and Dinner Tables

Marek Fuchs

My premise is that newspapers, looking to outrun their financial demons, have been dropping book reviews like bad habits, and, besides, newspapers never looked at books through an investor's eyes anyway. So here I am, reporting for duty again.

Whether it's an investment advice book, CEO autobiography, business history or financial thriller, The Business Press Maven has one measure: Does the book add to or detract from your ultimate understanding of investing? If it adds, then the book earns a coveted "Help" label. If not, it gets cursed with a dreaded "Hindrance" sticker. Ties, mind you, get lumped into "Hindrance," because if authors and publishers are asking for investors' time, the book better be good.

Speaking of what's good, let's start with what's not.

Oh, was I ever disappointed with Cocktail Economics: Discovering Investment Truths From Everyday Conversations (FT Press) by Victor A. Canto, which earns the "Hindrance" designation. Why the disappointment? From the title, I thought the book would be about possibly one of the most worthy business book subjects out there: how to hear, identify and act against cocktail-party talk about investments.

Any experienced investor knows that there may be no better contrary indicator than cocktail-party talk. All conventional wisdom about investing -- from bunk about real estate never going down because no one's building any more land to the latest in false takeover talk -- seems to spring from lips over dirty martinis in a social setting. I always keep my ears perked (at least until the sixth dirty martini) so I'll know exactly what not to do and think.

Alas, Canto's book does not delve here. In fact, it does not really delve into anything, but offers broad generalities under the tortured metaphor/guiding principle that an investor can be akin to a drink "mixologist," pouring big notions about macroeconomic changes into asset allocation.

There's nothing wrong with this strategy, but it's a little like telling people that if they jump, they should expect to land on the ground because of gravity. In fact, at some point in this interminable read, Canto, a consultant and former professor (beware that deadly combination in an author) writes: "One of Newton's laws states that everything that goes up must come down, and this is true everywhere. Gravity exists." Indeed, it does. I threw the book down, and it hit the ground.

It is hard to look trite alongside Cocktail Economics, but How to Get to the Top: Business Lessons Learned at the Dinner Table (Hyperion) manages to do it. While I'm often incredulous at how often authors feel the need to simplify business decisions and manners down to the lowest common denominator, I'm not against playing along.

But the level of thought in this book by Jeffrey J. Fox, who wrote Secrets of Great Rainmakers is so thin that it might just rot the brain of anyone who reads it. I'll give you one sample and then we'll quickly move on, careful not to get cooties. Writes Fox: "Moms who work have a tough job -- actually two tough jobs. Single moms have two super-tough jobs." It is not a tough job to give this book, which does not even rise to the level of a decent pamphlet, a "Hindrance" label.

Talk about a sight for sore eyes, let's make our way over to Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman. It is written by Jamie Reidy, a lieutenant in the Army who left the service in his mid-20s to become a Pfizer (PFE) salesman and rose to become a top peddler of Viagra.

That's a naturally funny career arc if there ever was one, and Reidy, who is naturally funny, does a good job of mining humor. (Why humor is so absent from so many business books -- where big money, big egos, big ambition and all the other natural ingredients in comedy are present -- is beyond me.)

More to the point, from investors' perspective, getting an inside look at what was once a top-flight sales force at a key time will truly broaden their understanding of sales forces. You'll see their strengths and weaknesses, gaining a better understanding of limitations, what is gained with more salespeople and what, if anything, may be lost when there are layoffs.

Sales forces are big, messy, bureaucratic, autocratic and egomaniacal -- not unlike, as Reidy quickly points out while at Pfizer's sales force boot camp, the Army. It is my pleasure to grant this book a "Help" label. I trust it will be in the running for The Business Press Maven's top business books of the year.

Another important read for investors -- if not quite as enjoyable -- is Pop!: Why Bubbles Are Great for the Economy (HarperCollins) by Daniel Gross. It can be read to remind every investor that an investment in a larger industry (from railroads to the Internet) is a three-act play; the bubble-busting part is often the second act. For that alone, I'll give the book a "Help" label, even if I have my quibbles with too many specific points of argument.