Bloomsburg Investment Group

The ultimate behind-the-curtain look at the hedge fund industry, unlocking the most valuable stories, secrets, and lessons directly from those who have played the game best.Written by Maneet Ahuja, "the" hedge fund industry insider, "The Alpha Masters" brings the secretive world of hedge funds into the light of day for the first time. (from goodreads.com)

In "The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital," the pioneers of the industry share the investing and management wisdom they have gained by investing in and transforming their portfolio companies.

Based on original interviews conducted by the authors, this book is filled with colorful stories on the subjects that most matter to the high-level investor, such as selecting and working with management, pioneering new markets, adding value through operational improvements, applying private equity principles to non-profits, and much more. (from goodreads.com)

Despite their heft, hedge funds—and the fund managers who take healthy fees for their work and who have become the "new elite," as Mr. Mallaby calls them—have remained something of an enigma. There are exceptions. Nearly everyone knows of Mr. Soros, the Hungarian-born trading titan who became a billionaire many times over by making big bets from his New York office near Central Park. But Mr. Robertson, whose Tiger Management kept pace with Warren Buffett's track record for years at a time, is a virtual unknown, as is James Simons, founder of the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund and arguably the most successful investor of all time. In 2009, his personal take was reportedly $2.5 billion.

This relative anonymity is due to the secretive nature of most hedge-fund managers, an obsession that makes them mysterious and often the subject of conspiracy theories. Hedge funds do wish to avoid scrutiny of their trading activities—but there is nothing particularly nefarious about this. Mr. Buffett himself has a special deal with regulators to delay disclosure of his stock investments, preventing copycats from piling on before he is finished buying.

The air of secrecy does stir curiosity, though, which is why the bright light shed by "More Money Than God" is particularly welcome. Mr. Mallaby, a fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and an expert on global economics, brings a keen sense of financial theory to his subject and a vivid narrative style.

Portraiture is part of his purpose. We meet Michael Steinhardt, the renowned hedge-fund manager who grew wealthy trading big blocks of stocks in the 1970s and 1980s. Now in retirement on his country estate an hour's drive north of New York City, Mr. Steinhardt is a lover of botany and a collector of exotic fauna. The author shows him dancing on his estate opposite "an elegant blue crane . . . that had taken to courting him with a graceful gavotte."

But none of the character portraits in "More Money Than God" is more captivating than the one of Alfred Jones, the father of the hedge-fund industry, who died in 1989. In Mr. Mallaby's telling, Jones was an erudite dandy, a onetime Marxist who hiked to the frontlines of the Spanish Civil War with the writer Dorothy Parker—where they shared a bottle of Scotch whisky with Ernest Hemingway.

Mr. Mallaby excels in unearthing hedge-fund lore, like the rise in the 1970s of a little-known Princeton outfit called the Commodities Corp. The firm reaped huge profits by betting, as its name suggests, exclusively on the markets for corn, soybeans, oil and other commodities. The fund's trend-following strategies gave birth to a cottage industry of shoot-from-the-hip investors whose cowboy approach typified hedge-fund investing in the 1980s and early 1990s. The motto of Commodities trading guru Amos Hostetter: "Cut your losses and ride your winners."

"More Money Than God" is primarily a narrative history, but it also delves frequently into some of the more esoteric theories behind hedge-fund investment strategies and their place in the financial world. If the book has a big idea, it is that hedge funds are an overall boon to Wall Street. (from online.wsj.com).

What do Dunkin' Donuts, J. Crew, Toys "R" Us, and Burger King have in common? They are all currently or just recently were owned, operated, and controlled by private equity firms. "The New Tycoons: Inside the Trillion Dollar Private Equity Industry That Owns Everything" takes the reader behind the scenes of these firms: their famous billionaire founders, the overlapping stories of their creation and evolution, and the outsized ambitions that led a group of clever bankers from small shops operating in a corner of Wall Street into powerhouse titans of capital. This is the story of the money and the men who handle it. (from goodreads.com)