Books like The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Investors and Managers

This is a MUST read for anybody interested in investment, management or business in general. It not only provides, in my opinion, the most sound investment strategies and advice, but also provides guidelines on how to run businesses with moral integrity and focus on providing value. It heavily criticizes various self-serving practices of "modern" CEOs, while at the same time not saying CEOs should not be well compensated. In other words, Buffet and by extension Berkshire demonstrate how you can actually create value and be wealthy by being honest and hard-working and not doing so on expense of your shareholders (or customers). He also analyses several economically important historic events (e.g. the 2008 sub-prime loans situation) and explains what went wrong in those instances.The book is a collection of excerpts from selected letters from Warren Buffett (and on occasion Charlie Munger) to their shareholders at Berkshire one of the most valuable US corporations. These letters in general available on their website, but how Lawrence Cunningham made a valuable selection and organization of (probably) most meaningful ones in this book. The organization adds value as it groups excerpts not in chronological order, but first grouped in various topics addressed (e.g. corporate governance, common stocks, investment alternatives) and then by importance. This gives an interesting perspective on how some things developed over years. While there is obviously some repetition, in the instance of this book this makes sense. The letters were written in various times (1986-2011) and repetition only demonstrates how Buffett's strategies are consistent and longterm (and that is the main reason for their success).Buffett's writing style is superb and often humorous. However, reading the book requires some understanding of economics and investing in general. It's uses quite some investment jargon (which I guess Berkshire shareholders are familiar with) which might be hard to get past if you're new to this domain. I am sure I will come back to this book (or the letters directly) several times as even with my fair grasp of the domain, certain things didn't yet full resonate. Finally, Buffett's main investment advice is easy to summarize:"We want the business to be one (a) that we can understand; (b) with favorable long-term prospects; (c) operated by honest and competent people; and (d) available at a very attractive price."