7. From Walter Isaacson, author of the magisterial 2011 biography of Steve Jobs, now comes The Innovators, which may be the definitive history of computing, or more accurately of the men and (vastly underappreciated) women who brought computing from its infancy to its present, and still rapidly evolving, state. This book demands to be read by any advisor seeking a full understanding of how information technology got where it is and where it may be going. (Isaacson makes the case that the next great leap is not artificial intelligence but a symbiosis between man and machine on a hitherto unimaginable scale.)

Other themes which come out of The Innovators include the extraordinary extent to which progress in computing has been intensely collaborative, and the ways in which so many seminal participants in that progress can be found at the interstices of technology and art. Even an innumerate technophobe such as your present correspondent found this book highly and rewardingly readable.

8. Finally, although I can hardly be objective about it, comes the one genuine “book of the year” for advisors. It’s Roy Diliberto’s Basic Truths for Financial Life Planners, and the reason I can’t claim any objectivity is that I love the book so much that I broke my own rule, and accepted an invitation to write the Foreword.

Basic Truths is that exquisitely rare book, an immensely practical guide to a successful, profitable and happy financial planning practice, written clearly and compellingly by one of the industry’s most notably successful practitioners. It presents Roy’s and his firm’s beliefs and behaviors in the quest for what I describe as an attainable utopia. That is, a practice which always places the client’s interest first, which integrates his emotional and financial needs, which inculcates in its partners and staff a shared sense of values and mission, and which  therefore becomes a genuinely happy experience for all its stakeholders.

Consciously or unconsciously, we all came into the profession of financial advice for three reasons: to do good, to do well by doing good, and to be happy doing well by doing good. Basic Truths for Financial Life Planners cannot fail to help you recover that hierarchy of motivations, and to realign your practice and your life with it.   
    
© 2014 Nick Murray. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission. All the books cited here were previously reviewed in the “Resources” feature of Nick’s monthly newsletter Nick Murray Interactive. To download a sample issue, visit www.nickmurray.com and click on “Newsletter.”

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