Review by L. Masonson for The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition)
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When I first came across the first edition of this book in my local library in 1959, I was a teenager. Back in those days there were only a handful of books about the stock market. And I’ve read all of them during my junior high and high school years.This latest updated 623-page paperback (the index alone is 33 pages) version updated by Jason Zweig is a welcome addition to this classic. The original chapters are intact, but with footnoted comments by Zweig. Moreover, he provides his own commentary on each chapter contents in a separate chapter following each original chapter. He provides extensive research, charts, tables and commentary that updates the book to the present years. He is not afraid to take on the big guns of Wall Street and show how wrong they were in some of their extremely bullish predictions during January-March 2000, when the market was at its peak.The first nine chapters cover investing basics that all investors could benefit from. There are many truisms spouted on Wall Street that are not really true. These chapters provide the investor with a realistic picture of how Wall Street works and what investors need to do to come out ahead. Chapters 10-20 focus strictly on fundamental analysis, stock selection, convertible issues and warrants, and other subjects. Investors who plan to invest directly in stocks should make sure to read these chapters. However, for readers more interested in investing in mutual funds, and in particular index funds, they need not concern themselves with all the detail in these chapters unless they have the time or interest in the subject matter presented.In conclusion, the combination of pioneer Ben Graham?s original work coupled with Zweig?s meticulous and enjoyable update, make this a remarkable book about investments and investor behavior that every new and experienced investor should read. Of the 500 investing books that I?ve read, this one certainly is one of the greats of all time.

Review by mingus500 for The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition)
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Graham’s writing is clear, concise and level-headed. He warns against unreasonable financial expectations and proceeds to explain his theories in sufficient detail to be worthwhile, without being over the comprehension of the layman interested in investing.The book is lengthy and “solid”, as opposed to other finance books that hope to explain investment in 100-200 pages. Topics include stocks vs. bonds, inflation, security analysis, and margin of safety (Graham’s analysis of the assets of a company in relation to its debt). Zweig’s commentary is useful, with footnotes to clarify historical references and, occasionally, demonstrate instances where Graham’s predictions proved untrue. At the end of each chapter, Zweig uses recent (up to early 2003) examples of Graham’s concepts to make things clearer to modern readers. (Graham’s text itself is his 1973 revision to the original 1949 edition.) Also helpful are numerous references to online articles at various sites (I cannot yet vouch for these links’ present state.)Based on my understanding, I highly recommend this edition to anyone interested in this book. I feel that I gleaned more from this annotated edition than I would have from the original, without having to conduct additional research.

Review by neurotome for The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition)
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This is the 4th edition of Benjamin Graham’s landmark book for the investing public, called “The Intelligent Investor.” However, it’s been “updated” for 2003 by Jason Zweig, a senior editor and writer at CNN/Money, and overall I think this detracts from, rather than improves, the book. I rate Graham’s book 5 stars and Zweig’s contributions get 3 stars: overall, 4 stars.

First off, there are 3 contributors to this book: Buffett, Graham and Zweig. Warren Buffett, the superinvestor who heads Berkshire Hathaway, is frequently pointed out as one of the world’s great investors/stock pickers and also as Ben Graham’s star student. Buffett’s preface to this book consists of 2 pages: a biographical essay he wrote about Graham in 1976, saying nice things about Graham’s personal qualities; and a recommendation to pay particular attention to Chapters 8 and 20. (Buffett, incidentally, cannot be honestly said to have been influenced by this book; his bible was Graham’s landmark 1940 textbook for the professional security analyst, called “Security Analysis.”) So Buffettologists should know that there will be little to interest them here.

Graham’s text is level-headed and sane, and makes for wonderful reading. His distinction between speculators and investors, his way of viewing the markets, and his methodical approach to considering the inherent value of investments is required reading. In my opinion, any non-professional who’s interested in investing money could benefit from reading it. Enough said about that.

However, Graham’s book makes up only about 1/3 of the present volume. The format is the following: Graham writes a 6 page chapter; Zweig pads that chapter out to 8 pages with giant footnotes; and then Zweig appends a 10-15 page “commentary” to each chapter. Now who exactly is Jason Zweig? I’d never heard of him. His qualifications are very different from Graham’s and Buffett’s; he is a writer for CNN/Money magazine. I don’t consider him to be an investment professional.

Unfortunately, this shows in his writing. Whereas Graham’s text is even-handed, methodical, and rational, Zweig comes across as hysterical, emotional, and shrill. His annoying habit of flinging superlatives around (he frequently mentions Buffett as “the greatest investor of all time”, and calls Graham the “greatest practical investment thinker of all time”) is annoying and adds little to understanding. But much worse is his incessant habit of putting words into Graham’s mouth. About 3 or 4 chapters in I began to chafe at this. “Who is this Jason Zweig exactly,” I thought, “and how exactly does he claim to know how Graham would have analyzed the tech bubble of 1999-2000?”

As I started paying closer attention, I began to feel that Zweig was making comments – under the guise of “updating” Graham’s ideas – that Graham himself would never have endorsed. This bothered me. I feel that, in a way, I was baited with Graham’s name into buying a book by Jason Zweig, and it’s not the book I thought I was buying.

To be fair, Zweig’s commentary is often interesting. His commentary on Chapter 12 has nothing to do with Graham’s chapter (on analyzing per-share earnings) at all; rather, it is a scathing, well-presented, easily understood, and fairly detailed analysis of certain examples of accounting irregularities that contributed to the tech blowup and led to Sarbanes-Oxley. (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Zweig had written a book of his own about this topic; if so, I may buy it.) But this only further strengthens the feeling, present always, that Zweig is less interested in explaining Graham’s text and more interested in pushing his own agenda and ways of investment thinking. Now for the casual reader who enjoys CNN/Money’s style and format as their principal source of investment advice, they may truly enjoy and benefit from this. But I wanted to read Graham’s historical text as a whole and interpret it myself; Zweig’s constant, harping interpolations severely detracted from my ability to do this.

Finally, there is little in the first 10 chapters of this book that has not become near-dogma for the conservative, value-oriented small investor, repeated ad nauseam in the pages of Money, Forbes, the Motley Fool, and elsewhere. The meat of the book is in the last half, where Graham touches – lightly – on issues that the conservative investor may be interested in valuing, and how to do it right. Frankly I was expecting him to go into more depth on these topics, and I will probably be picking up a copy of either The Interpretation of Financial Statements or Security Analysis (the 1940 edition seems to be the consensus pick) to learn more about his thoughts on these matters.