A contrarian look at how Warren Buffett thinks about investing and related issues
Warren Buffett is the most successful and revered investor of all time. His ability to consistently find undervalued companies has made him one of the world's richest men.
Despite many previous books about him, it's rare to find an objective assessment--one that praises him when appropriate, but also recognizes that even Buffett makes mistakes. For instance, is he right to call for higher taxes and an end to earnings guidance? Should Buffett fans copy his avoidance of technology stocks?
In...

Has capitalism failed?
Is it fundamentally greedy and immoral, enabling the rich to get richer? Are free markets Darwinian places where the most ruthless crush smaller competitors, where vital products and services are priced beyond the ability of many people to afford them?
Capitalism is the world's greatest economic success story. It is the most effective way to provide for the needs of people and foster the democratic and moral values of a free society. Yet the worst recession in decades has widely--and understandably--shaken people's faith in our system. Even before the...

Peter Masterson is a polar advisor to a scientific station on Antarctica's desolate Ross Ice Shelf, where engineers are experimenting with a top secret hot water boring process. Mensa Station sits in the shadow of the impassable Queen Maud Mountains not far from the mouth of the treacherous glacier known as Hell's Flow. When a Soviet polar expedition makes an unexpected and unexplained visit on their way to a mysterious rendezvous, Masterson's suspicions are aroused. A female Russian on the team wants to defect. One of their engineers is killed and a saboteur is at work in the station. Then,...

He's the smartest kid in his town. He's the smartest kid in his state. He's the smartest kid in his own mind. Bobby McGee is the self-described child progeny whose ideas will make millions. They will make him a famous inventor entrepreneur at the tender age of eleven. And maybe, just maybe, they will get him out of his chores.

Hong Kong Reporter Doyle Mulligan stumbles onto the biggest and maybe last story of his life. He's investigating the exodus of Chinese from Hong Kong in the months before the handover of the colony to Beijing. The man he's following is a possible ticket-seller on the underground railroad spiriting Chinese out of the city. But when Mulligan follows him aboard a flight to Taiwan, the plane gets blown out of the sky and the ticket seller gets blown out of the plane. One by one Mulligan's leads are eliminated. One by one the people who are smuggling out the Chinese are being murdered by an...

At first blush, Michael Martin is hardly cut from heroic cloth. He gets seasick on boats. He gets airsick when he flies. He can't even stand crossing bridges. He's afraid of guns and knives. Cats put him into a tailspin. But he speaks flawless Spanish and he knows northern Colombia like the back of his hand. That's enough for Gayle Saunders. She talks Martin into going with her to Colombia in order to find her missing boyfriend, a hotshot pilot named Johnny Dash who'd hoped to make some fast money in the drug smuggling trade. What Michael Martin doesn't know is that he's not just along for...

Dag Miller is a self-described sailor-of-fortune with a questionable cargo business in the South China Sea and a crew of three, including a fierce-looking laconic but lethal Korean first mate and a natural-born sneak of an Indian engineer. The third virtual crew-member is the ship herself, a Fast Attack Non-displace-ment Naval Prototype called FANNY, a salvaged and refitted U.S. Navy hydrofoil capable of flying at speeds in excess of a hundred knots and getting the trio into trouble every bit as fast as it gets them out. Miller's current charter is a pair of U.N. Vulcano-logists out of...

In the upper reaches of the Amazon River system a mammoth dam called O Ecuador has been built to harness a wild tributary of the Rio Negro. That, at least, is its stated purpose. In the process it will flood a mountain valley where an elusive tribe of feared headhunters called the Kuru still live in utter isolation. Even FUNAI, the Brazilian Indian affairs bureau knows virtually nothing about them. Millions have been spent to construct the dam. Billions in gold are at stake. Jim Malloy is an American pilot on the run from U.S. federal agents working as a cargo hauler to a logging firm on the...