Nonfiction Book Reviews

Note: Joel Glenn Brenner is a woman, and there should be a umlaut above the “e” in her first name, although I don’t have a clue of how to produce one of those on my keyboard. Just so you weren’t too confused by me referring to a “Joel” as a girl…

I was checking a patron out at the front desk when I saw The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars by Joel Glenn Brenner in the stack. Intrigued, I put the book on hold as soon as the patron walked out the door.

When the patron returned it, I eagerly started reading and boy am I glad that I did.  I will never look at the candy aisle at the store the same.  Before reading this book, I was rather clueless about the chocolate world, and in fact, if asked, I would have said that Hershey and Mars had merged together and were the same company now.  (Don’t ask me why I thought that, but that’s what I believed.)

Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong if I tried.  There is an intense rivalry between Hershey and Mars, akin to the one between Pepsi and Coca-Cola, and actually, Hershey and Mars don’t play well together.  At all.  But that isn’t always how it was: In the beginning, Hershey helped Mars get started, and provided all of the chocolate for Mars for years.

Then to get even more bizarre, I found out what M&M stands for.  If you ask a Mars worker, they’ll tell you, “The owner liked his name Mars so much, he used it twice!” ie, it’s Mars & Mars.  Although it’s a good line, it’s not true, and in fact the second M stands for Murrie, the last name of the president of Hershey.

I told you it was bizarre.

This book was fascinating for me - I love to learn, I love chocolate, and Ms. Brenner is very adept at weaving in interesting tidbits and making it read more like a novel than a dry economics book on how these two companies came to be where they are.  She is a former newspaper reporter for the Washington Post, and it shows - she has a great writing style.

Here are some of the more interesting tidbits:

• The secrecy is so strict at Mars that when their machinery breaks down and they have to hire an outside company to come fix it, they meet the mechanic at the door, blindfold him, walk him through the plant to the machine, take off the blindfold, let him do his job, then blindfold him again to walk him back out. All very politely, of course.
• Because Mars is a privately held company, they are not required to reveal anything about anyone to anybody they don’t want to.  If you call Mars and ask for the name of the president of the company, the secretary will say very politely, “We don’t give out that information” and click! hang up the phone on you.
• The men who started each company (Hershey and Mars) struggled an incredible amount before becoming successful.  Both of them lost their shirts multiple times before finally making it.  The author goes through the story of each man quite in-depth, and I felt like I was reading the biography of each man, along with the general story of the companies themselves.
• After the death of founder Milton Hershey, the Hershey company was mismanaged so badly that they started to sink, and quickly.   A small example of the problem: they kept track of what they were selling by counting the cases - they sold X amount of 6 packs, Y amount of 12 packs.  A 6 pack of what, they didn’t know.  They didn’t differentiate between a Hershey bar and a Kit Kat bar.  They simply knew that all together, they had sold X amount of 6 packs.  Which is an insane way of doing business.  This has changed since then.
• Mars sells very little peanut butter candy because the owners hate peanut butter. I don’t blame them (I hate peanut butter too!) but I do think that it’s a strange reason to make a financial decision.  Then again, not having to explain their decisions to anyone isone of the biggest reasons they have stayed a privately owned company.
• The Hershey company is the sole supporter of one of the largest and richest orphanages in the world.  Philanthropy was one of the guiding principles of Mr. Hershey’s life, although his dream of a Utopia didn’t play out like he wanted it to.

I could go on and on, but I don’t want to ruin the book by saying too much.  I will say this: If someone had sat down and tried to come up with two completely different stories of how a chocolate company came into being, they couldn’t have done better than the two stories you hear here.  Mars and Hershey are diametrically opposite in every way except for the fact that both companies make chocolate.  It really was a great story.

I also enjoyed the fact that Brenner focuses on more than just Hershey and Mars - she also interviews and talks about other candy companies in the US and around the world.  It gives you a great perspective on the candy world.

The only part that I didn’t like is that I felt that Brenner tended to go on and on about uninteresting things at certain points of the book, stuff that a good editor would have chopped out.  It was definitely longer than it needed to be, and I found myself skimming a few times.

Overall, I think it’s worth 4.25 out of 5 stars.  If you’re interested in economics or are a chocolate lover, you’ve got to check this book out.  I promise you, trying to pick out a candy bar at the grocery store will become a whole different experience after having read it.

Hava

Have you ever read a book because you felt you “had to” as a part of your general education? That’s why I picked up Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World by Alan Greenspan - it seemed like one of those books that I “had to” read, as a citizen of America and all that good stuff.

Despite that inauspicious beginning, I ended up loving the book. I was shocked by how readable it was, and spent the next week telling everyone that they needed to read it too.

This is a 921 (meaning it’s an autobiography) but Alan Greenspan being who he is, the majority of the book focuses on the financial system of the world. The book actually starts out on September 11th, 2001, then jumps back and focuses on his early life, and goes forward in time from there.  In the excerpt below, he’s talking about his first job out of college, where he was charged with finding data and making it accessible to businessmen and union leaders.

I think this passage really spotlights the fundamental gap between me and him, since I’d rather have my teeth extracted with no painkillers than mess with numbers on a regular basis, but that’s why he was Chairman of the Fed and I’m…well, I’m definitely not.

There was no room to work in the library’s crowded stacks, so I would lug armloads of materials to my desk. Usually I’d have to blow the dust off the books. The chief economist would assign the research projects, and in just a few months people began to tab me as a guy who knew all the data. In a sense, that was true.

It became my passion to master all of the knowledge on those shelves. I read about the robber barons; I spent hours over the census of population of 1890; I studied railroad freight-car loadings of that era, trends in short staple cotton prices for the decades after the Civil War, and myriad other details of the vast American economy.

It wasn’t drudgery - far from it. Instead of reading Gone with the Wind, I was happy to immerse myself in “Copper Ore Deposits in Chile.” ~Page 33 of Age of Turbulence

Great for him and America that he was that way, and even better for me that I don’t have to be.

Although I enjoyed reading about his background, the really interesting part for me came when he started talking about dealing with the different presidents. He’s libertarian (meaning, a capitalist first and foremost - most of his book is spent passionately defending capitalism as the best way of life) but his position was nonpolitical in nature, and he tried to stay out of the political spotlight.

His behind-the-scenes look at each of the presidents was an eye-opener for me. The president who seemed to be the most aligned with Greenspan when it came to economic policy was actually Bill Clinton, and Greenspan had heaps of praise for his policies on economic decisions.

He talks briefly about the Monica Lewinsky affair, and says how disappointed he was in that happening, but he didn’t seem to let it affect his judgment on whether or not Clinton made a good president.

Overall, the book was quite a-political, which I really liked, because I hate having one point of view or another forced down my throat when the book is supposed to be about something else entirely. Now if the book is labeled as a political book (like a book from Rush Limbaugh or something) then fine, at least I know it going into the book. When people try to slide their views in subtly, it really drives me nuts.  Greenspan doesn’t do that.

After going through the presidents up to President Bush, and then his eventual retirement from the Federal Board, Greenspan then dives into what he thinks about each region of the world: China, India, Russia, South America, and more. He talks quickly about why the country is where it is, what changes he thinks they need to make to become more prosperous in the future, and what he thinks will actually happen.

To me, this was the most fascinating part of the book. To have someone as knowledgeable as him give a broad overview of a country and its economic policies was engrossing. I was almost late to work several times, because I didn’t want to put the book down.

After all this, the book finally ends up doing what I was worried about all along: It got boring. He gets into the fine details of how the financial world hums along, and even though I know that understanding all of this would make me a much more informed person, it was just too much for my non-math brain. Here’s a quick excerpt - tell me if you understand this:

A detailed calculation by Federal Reserve Board staff employing data from more than 5,000 nonfinancial US corporations for the years 1983 - 2004 found that growth in the sum of deficits of those corporations where capital expenditures exceeded cash flow persistently outpaced the growth in corporate value-added. The sum of surpluses and deficits, disregarding sign, as a ratio to a proxy for corporate value-added exhibits an average annual increase of 3.5% per year.*

To clarify, it says in the footnotes:

*The surpluses (and deficits) are measured as income before extraordinary items, plus depreciation, minus capital expenditures. The proxy for corporate value-added is gross margin, or sales less cost of goods sold. ~ Page 356 of Age of Turbulence

So glad we cleared that up…

Unfortunately, Greenspan goes on in this fashion for several chapters. At first, I tried to understand it, and then I gave up. I am soooo not a math person. I just started skimming until things got interesting again, and they did. The book ended on a great note, and I finished in awe of the knowledge that Greenspan possesses, and also quite sad that the book was finally finished. At 531 pages, I really should have been celebrating its completion, but it was such an interesting book, I wanted to keep learning.

If you have any interest whatsoever in finances, politics, the economy, or just the world in general, you really can’t miss when it comes to this book. Everyone I’ve talked to who has read it thoroughly enjoyed it, so I know I’m not the oddball out here.

Overall, it rates 4.5 out of 5. I wish I could give it higher, but there’s just one too many dry spots.

Havs

Fun Friday - The Weekly Review of Children’s Books

I originally picked up A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money: How to Make It, Save It, and Spend It by Nancy Holyoke and Ali Douglass because my niece (hi Hailey!) had checked it out, and I saw it when she returned it. I figured I had read plenty of guides on how to manage money as an adult - it was time to check out what the kids were being taught.

Again, I was surprised at how knowledge-packed the book turned out to be.  Perhaps I’m just not expecting enough out of children’s books, I don’t know, but so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the depth of the information given.

In A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money, American Girl teaches the whole cycle of money - it gives a list of 101 ways to make money (selling items or providing a variety of services) and also how to figure out if the business venture is profitable or not by doing a cost analysis.  It even talks about keeping a ledger and staying on a budget.  If there was a girl out there who read this book and took it to heart, she’d be a miniature Donald Trump (but hopefully with better hair!) by age 25.

The book also tackles sticky subjects from how to ask for an allowance raise, to recognizing and reigning in the impulse buying while at the mall.  It even touches ever so briefly on putting money into the stock market and paying taxes on what you earn.  (I told you I was shocked at how much was in here).

Yet it still managed to stay very readable and interesting to the average tweener (10 - 14 year old range).  It had lots of great drawings and quite a few multiple choice quizzes.

So comes the question: Would a boy read it?  No, I would say probably not - too many references to buying nail polish and new clothes at the mall, not to mention the fact that all of the drawings are of girls.  I haven’t looked to see, but I would hope something similar but aimed for the boy population has been produced, because it really did break down money management into children-sized pieces.

If your daughter wants to make money this summer, or if you’ve noticed that she tends to spend her money too freely and you’re hoping to give her a little direction, this would be an awesome book to get for her.  I honestly can’t think of anything critical or negative to say about it.

Warning: Childless adult is about to give out parenting advice - ignore at will!!

If I had a daughter, I would give her this book when starting her allowance, so she could be pointed in the right direction on how to handle her money, instead of just being handed money each week.  I was a pretty open spender as a child - I once spent $50 on candy and had a stomachache for a week.  I really could’ve used this book as a kid.

Overall, I give A Smart Girl’s Guide to Money 4.75 out of 5.

Hava

Dave Ramsey is one of those guys who a person either loves or hates. He tends to inspire pretty dramatic feelings both ways. Luckily for him, the majority of America seems to love him.

The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey was the first book that I ever read by Ramsey, and it was such an inspiration to me, that I instantly joined the Ramsey Fan Camp. I was struggling with some pretty large debts at that point (at least large in comparison to my income!) and I was barely keeping my head above water. I was told to read The Total Money Makeover - that it would help me. They were right.

I wish I could say that because of this book, I made major life changes and became debt free, but instead I just got a little better at juggling.  Eventually my husband and I were able to move and get into a better situation, to where we are now debt free. But the problem before was not Ramsey - it was me. Ramsey actually sums it up pretty well on page 4:

Winning at money is 80% behavior and 20% head knowledge. What we do isn’t the problem; doing it is. Most of us know what to do, but we just don’t do it. If I can control the guy in the mirror, I can be skinny and rich. We will let other books work on the skinny, and I will help you with the rich part. No, there are no secrets, and yes, this will be very hard. Hey, if it was easy, every moron walking would be wealthy.

If that kind of bluntness appeals to you, you’ll love this book.

The baby steps that Ramsey gives to get out of debt and stay there are the following (in order!):

1) Save up a baby emergency fund: $1,000.
2) Snowball your debts (a focused way of paying off your debts)
3) Finish your emergency fund: Save 3 - 6 months of expenses
4) Invest 15% of your income into a retirement fund
5) Save for your kid’s college fund (if you have children)
6) Pay off your mortgage on your home
7) Build wealth

My problem previously had been saving the $1000 baby emergency fund. When your bank account is perilously close to zero, it’s hard to fathom having $1000 in your savings account, waiting for a rainy day.  He talks about how to save the $1000 and gives some inspirational stories from people who did, so again, that was me, not him.

Okay, so onto my critiques (you knew it was coming!) As I said in Financial Peace, Ramsey is a Christian who quotes the Bible fairly regularly to make his point. If you’re not Christian, do keep that in mind. It isn’t overwhelming, but it is there.

Secondly, it has been said that Ramsey is too conservative when it comes to savings, but overly liberal when it comes to retirement numbers. I would have to agree with that. He says that you can afford to put your savings for retirement on hold until after you’ve paid off all your debts, plus saved a 3 - 6 month emergency fund, by being very generous when it comes to his estimates on a “normal” return on investments. I don’t agree that you ought to expect a 12% rate of return every year on your stocks. Yeah, it would be nice, but hardly likely. Ramsey’s great for advice on getting out of debt, but I would pick someone else to get investment advice from.

These shortcomings aside, this is a very inspirational book - it’s liberally dosed with stories from couples who have worked through debt and came out the other side debt-free and liberated. Reading stories of these “gazelle intense” couples makes you want to stand up and yell, “I can do this too!” I think this is the monetary equivalent of No Plot? No Problem by Chris Baty - Dave Ramsey makes you truly believe in yourself.

I give it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Yeah, he has his shortcomings, but overall, this is just a darn good book.

Hava

Photo Credit: Scol22

America’s Cheapest Family Gets You Right on the Money by Steven and Annette Economides is a good book to pick up if you’re looking for inspiration on how to live cheaply but well.  The Economides (yes, that really is their last name!) are cheapskates, and proud of it.  Yet they come across as being fairly normal, if a bit over-organized.  They go grocery shopping once a month, period.  No, they don’t even go by to “pick up the milk” or “grab a loaf of bread.”  They buy gallons of milk, pour a little off the top, and freeze it.  They buy bread by the bagful, and freeze those too.  I don’t think I’ll ever be as organized as they are. Ever.

They produce a bimonthly newsletter, The HomeEconomiser, which is where the bulk of the information for the book came from.  I haven’t subscribed to that newsletter, so I can’t say myself that it’s a good idea to sign up for it, but if it’s anything like the book, I would think it would be worth the while, especially if you need ongoing support to keep your focus on your goal of living below your means (or at least paying off your debt).

But still, it was an interesting book, and had quite a few good suggestions on how to tighten your belt.  A lot of it was the same that you’d hear in other tightwad books (shop with coupons, don’t buy on impulse, shop around for the best deal, etc - standard fare for financial books like this) but there were some real nuggets of helpful information buried in there.  The most interesting part to me was seeing how the family as a whole operated.  There is a picture on the front of the whole family, and their input is scattered throughout from the kids.  The parents, of course, are the authors.  Many of the financial books out there come from the mother’s point of view (I’m not sure why that is - perhaps because the moms are trying to stay home and raise the kids, so they’re the ones who have the time to streeeeetch their money as far as it can go…?) so it was fun to read this one that was basically from the everyone’s point of view.

If you’re new to saving money and trying to live below your means, this might be a good book to pick up, for a broad overview of how to do be a better tightwad. If you’ve already read every book out there on saving money and making every penny count, there probably won’t be enough new stuff in here to make it worth the read.

And if you’re on the hunt for budgeting or finance tips, we’ve got several great websites here at Today.com that cover that subject: Counting Pennies and Frugal Living.  Be sure to check them out!

I give America’s Cheapest Family 4 out of 5 stars.

Havs