Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is a very odd book - only suitable for pop-culture enthusiasts. "Alpha" suggests risk adjusted returns to investors - not to their investment managers. However, the whole text is a glowing tribute to the wealthiest investment managers. The wealthiest managers are those who have raised the most assets from the public, but every study on the topic indicates that smaller funds are better for investors. Why does this matter? As the old saying goes, "where are the investors' yachts?" I have been reading financial publications from a full array of sources (everything from WSJ/ pop-culture texts to juried academic publications/PhD dissertations) for 28-years. "The Alpha Masters" really belongs at or near the bottom of the quality pile. The book is largely a snap-shot biography of the wealthiest hedge-fund managers, with no regard to their clients' results. The text includes a photo-insert of billionaire investment managers enjoying hobbies like playing chess, fishing, scuba-diving, and hiking around volcanos. Maneet's photo (she is the author) incorporates a plunging neckline, and her descriptions of her interviews read like Cosmo or Vogue ("...he was dressed in...", "...we had Diet Coke and turkey sandwiches...", "... the plush carpets..."). Many readers will also find the abundance of clichés more distracting than a sound bite from a professional athlete. She writes: "The journey is the process...and it often takes a good deal of back-and forth before decisions are finalized." Good job, Maneet! Way to give 110% for the team when everything was on the line! If you are a high-school student who needs to do a book report over a weekend, OR if you need to line a cat box/bird cage - this text would be an excellent choice for either task. If you are in the industry, or a potential hedge fund investor, you will be very disappointed by this book. That said, "The Alpha Masters" is probably the most intellectual effort CNBC's "Squawk Box" has ever attempted. Booyah - Maneet! Hopefully, you won't get busted by the SEC with Cramer and Maria B. As for how Maneet accessed such extraordinary opportunities - beginning as a teenager - well, I don't fully understand. However, I suspect that she might just know how to exploit "alternative assets" better than any of the managers she profiled. The afterword by the legendary Myron Scholes is hilarious. He notes that she misunderstands the word "alpha", and he writes "I don't know how she was able to assemble this amazing group (or even how she got me to write this afterword)..."