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Title: Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip by JIM ROGERS ISBN: 0-375-50912-7 Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.67 (52 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Mediocre travelogue
Comment: This book is basically a mediocre travelogue, filled with the self-indulgent recollections collected while driving across the world in a custom designed Mercedes. Written by Jim Rogers, a retired hedge-fund manager, it is a recounting of a world-wide adventure. Along the way, Rogers punctuates his wandering narrative with economic observations and glib predictions about the future.
Granted, Jim Rogers and his current wife Paige did something few will ever do-spend three years and drive through 116 countries, racking up over 152,000 miles doing it. That is awe-inspiring.
However, while reading this book, I couldn't help but be reminded of the travelogues written at the turn of the last century, where rich families would travel the world jotting self-important journal entries about how superior they were to the local savages.
Jim comes across as self-important and slightly arrogant. Opinionated is putting it lightly. But it is because he is what he is - a rich socialite traveling the world to indulge himself.
He blames European colonialism for most of the corruption and tyranny in Africa. His solution? Simply redraw the political maps around religious populations and end all aid to the countries.
He states that anti-American bias around the world is because of... you guessed it. United States government. He criticizes Clinton, Bush, and Greenspan.
The most interesting parts I thought was when Rogers retells about how he got conned into buying fake diamonds (glass in Africa), and also tracked down a broker that stole his money on a previous trip (South America). He also was surprised about how many of his predictions from his previous trip were just simply wrong.
At least that offers some balance to the "I'm right and everyone else is wrong" tone that permeates the book.
In spite of the negatives, I found it interesting nonetheless, to see the world filtered through Jim's eyes.
Rating: 5
Summary: Let My People Trade - The Gospel according to Jim
Comment: Jim Rogers may never hit the list of top 10 best selling authors but that's not because his latest book lacks any of the important characteristics of a bestseller. The only disqualifier is self-imposed by the author. The book is designed to blow away many common illusions and prejudices about the world we live in. It is not the stuff popular fiction is made of.
Jim is a former hedge fund manager who retired at 37, following a successful stint on Wall Street alongside George Soros. In the early nineties he published his first book Investment Biker, a story of his round-the-world trip by motorcycle.
His new book called Adventure Capitalist-The Ultimate Road Trip describes his second round-the-world trip, this time by a custom built Mercedes-Benz car. He set out with his wife Paige and a team of two other guys in 1999. The trip took them on a 240,000 kilometer journey through 116 countries and ended three years later.
I believe that this book should be required reading at schools and colleges not just because it beats Phileas Fogg's journey hands down in intellectual stimulation, but because the book is also a compendium of free-market ideas and live comparative social analysis.
Jim's starting point was to search for investment opportunities. He set out with the open mind of a moneymaker on pilgrimage to find the truth about market conditions. He is looking for profitable opportunities, businesses and countries to invest in and is not prepared to accept conventional wisdom, official or ideological distortions. He has equal contempt for the party politics in US as with those of any other country he visits. He lashes out against Turkmenbashi, the dictator in charge of Turkmenistan, for perpetuating his own brand of Stalinist cult of personality and destroying the country in the process. But then shows the same contempt for President Bush for confusing devaluation with depreciation and also with former President Clinton who he blames for failing to observe and react to the creation and bursting of the biggest market bubble in decades. "I would cast a pox on both their houses-the Democrats and the Republicans" he proclaims in exasperation.
Adventure Capitalist exposes some official and popular myths for what they are in a way that made me look at politics and religion from a very different perspective. In China, Jim tells of attending service in a Chinese Christian Church, where the local worshipers, while singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" never realized that in lands as far as North Carolina there are people like Jesse Helms who are frothing at the mouth while bemoaning religious persecution in their country.
Despite not being able to obtain a visa to drive freely though Iran, Jim still admits to holding some small investments in the country and suggests forgetting the official analysis coming from Washington. "...there is a lot of positive change coming from Iran." he claims.
Jim squarely lays the blame on the British for their Imperial invention of the passport and for the subsequent regulation of immigration by Government bureaucrats worldwide. His prediction is that in some parts of the world passports will not manage to stop the changing of borders.
He talks of countries where he likes to invest and economies that he believes are on the verge of collapse. Which ones are those? Well, let's say I don't expect he will be a best selling author in Moscow.
Jim Rogers will probably not be officially proclaimed as prophet any time soon, but I know there will be people who will quote passages of the Adventure Capitalist for the years to come.
Rating: 5
Summary: A silly looking book to be taken very seriously
Comment: Remindful of Tocquville. The book helps the reader understand that the prospects of any country or region is dictated by the ability of those indiginous to embrace honest and vigorous commerce. A modern investment treatise written with the honesty of a man who has made enough not to care whom he offends. Forget the yellow mercedes and the tag along wife, this book is full of valuable wisdom to any investor willing to learn from a true master.
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Title: Investment Biker : Around the World with Jim Rogers by Jim Rogers ISBN: 0812968719 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Pub. Date: 08 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of the 21st Century by William Bonner, Addison Wiggin ISBN: 0471449733 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 12 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: Tomorrow's Gold: Asia's Age of Discovery by Marc Faber ISBN: 9628606727 Publisher: CLSA Pub. Date: 12 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.95 |
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Title: The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures by Richard Duncan ISBN: 0470821027 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 25 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation by Edward Chancellor ISBN: 0452281806 Publisher: Plume Pub. Date: 05 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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