This is a great time of year to sell your old college textbooks compared to the end of a semester. At the end of a semester you have two things going against you. First, that’s when everyone else is selling their books. More competition means lower prices. Second, since books for the next semester haven’t been announced, buyers don’t know which books they’ll need. So you might be able to sell a book that will be worthless in a few months since they are buying some of everything, but you’re unlikely to get as good a price for the books that will be needed.

Fast forward to this time of year, right before the start of a fall semester. Now, few people are selling books and those books that are needed are in high demand. Both of those factors means

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The latest book review here at Richer by the Day is How Come That Idiot’s Rich and I’m Not? by Robert Shemin.

The author has always had trouble getting things right. He constantly made mistakes. As a result, he also got it wrong when trying to make the mistakes that hold people back from wealth. By understanding this double negative, backwards logic (he can’t even screw up right) he was able to rewrite the rules for success, which are oftentimes the complete opposite of the things we do when aiming for success.

Following his own advice to keep things simple, the simplicity of the philosophy is what makes it so powerful and achievable. Simplicity inspires focus

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My latest book review is for Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign To Rig Our Tax System To Benefit The Super Rich - And Cheat Everybody Else.

When I first heard that Perfectly Legal was written by someone who works for the New York Times, I was hesitant to waste my time, fearing that the book would have the same liberal bias that makes the paper hardly worth a glance. I was pleasantly surprised that author David Cay Johnston largely succeeded in presenting a balanced view of the issues surrounding the tax system. In fact, I only thought “what a load of crap” a few times throughout the book, and only yelled it out once. Even the sections with which I did not agree were valuable because they presented an alternative view and inspired consideration. I can imagine that the author would be open to debate the issues, giving respect to those with differing opinions. The entire book was well presented, well written, and seemed to present the issues in a completely unbiased manner.

I particularly enjoyed

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The recipient of the first book giveaway has been chosen and notified by email. They will be receiving my copy of Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational. Anyone who is interested in purchasing a copy of the book can find it here on Amazon.

Tomorrow I’ll be posting a review of the book I’m currently reading, Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston.  Be sure to make yourself eligible for that book giveaway, which will be held on June 22nd.

Predictably Irrational made economics entertaining in much the same way as Freakonomics. The fact that I enjoyed both of these books probably indicates my appreciation of behavioral economics in general. In Predictably Irrational, author Dan Ariely presents counter-intuitive theories and backs them up with very interesting experiments. He seems to have one of those jobs that appears more fun than what most of us do for a living.

What follows are quick overviews of each of the chapters. These overviews are not meant to trivialize the work presented but rather whet your appetite for a more thorough explanation.

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As regular readers of Richer by the Day know, I read a lot of personal finance, investing, business, and economics books. Along with my personal experiences, the books that I read have played a huge role in my financial education. I typically list the book I am currently reading in the sidebar of this blog. I often write a review of each book as I complete it.

How does this help you, and where do the Free Books referenced in the title come into play?

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Freakonomics is a random and interesting look at the world through the eyes of a freak economist. I don’t mean freak in a bad way, just not “normal.” That’s the part that can take a potentially boring subject like economics and make it something that I would want to read.

The book is more a collection of random, well documented research, than a sequential stream of information building towards one unifying point. The takeaway is that looking at complex economical situations from new perspectives often shows the flaws in conventional wisdom and the results you expect the data to show. Each chapter is basically an example application of that theory.

Exploring seemingly meaningless questions like “Why do drug dealers still live with their moms” and

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I finished reading The Long Tail over the weekend. The name of the book comes from the increasing importance of the sum of products and services that sell in small numbers. It makes the case that because there are so many of them, adding up these little sales actually makes them more valuable then the small number of products that sell in huge numbers, i.e. the biggest hit is the sum of the non-hits.

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Below are the books I’m either currently reading or have recently completed.

The recent volatility in the stock market, along with what appears to be a sagging economy, has led a lot of people to believe that the crash of 87 is an event likely to repeat. Of course, given a flimsy economic stimulus package and one day of positive gains on the stock market, many people are already saying this crisis has been averted.

Short term predictions are mainly a guessing game. There are just too many variables to accurately say what the stock market may do in the next days or weeks. Longer term trends are easier to read and thus make more accurate predictions.

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