Newcomers and even hardened investors and managers will find the Frank Martin retelling of the Lost Decade lightened by his droll sense of humor, though the wit is balanced by stinging rebukes of the greedy and the amoral, the sloppy thinkers and government officials hurried into bad fiscal policy. Based in his native Indiana, Martin doesn't have any patience with phonies and charlatans; he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis 30 years ago and is confined to a wheelchair.

A voracious and diverse reader, Martin is a name and quote dropper, happily: Joining Einstein in the roll call of observers are John Maynard Keynes, Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Bernard Baruch, Peter Bernstein, Benjamin Graham, Robert Shiller and more.

Nobody can accurately predict the future, Martin says, but his investment philosophy remains unwavering: eschew rear-view mirror investing and take well-considered, independently arrived at risk.

"Sometimes it's not how much you gain in the good markets but how much you don't lose in the ugly ones that separates the winners from the wannabes. As you can see, going with the flow is easy. Paddling upstream isn't.''

John Wiley & Sons., Inc.  449 pages. $34.95.

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