Barry Sergeant: Brett Kebble - The Inside Story

Being interested in financial markets, I have been meaning to read the Barry Sergeant book - Brett Kebble - The Inside Story - for a while now. One of my colleagues gave me a copy and I just finished it this morning.

Have to say it was a bit of a mixed bag and if you have no interest in mining, the Kebbles or stockmarket investing then this book will just be one big question mark for you.

Make no mistake this book was heavy going. With so many companies, personalities, fake business entities etc. I won't lie I battled through it. I think you would need to be an auditor to try and keep track over what Kebble was actually doing!

The Kebble "fraud" is likely to be one of the those stories which will hang around for so many years. As a mining character he was larger than life and almost everybody I have met had a story to tell about him and when the story of him being killed in a hail of bullets in Melrose broke, it took a long while for the dust to start to settle.

No questions asked, this was a very heavy read and if you are looking for braindead entertainment this isn't it. If you are looking for clues as to who actually killd Kebble, then the story skirts around this a bit but doesn't nail it down.

Still it was definately an interesting read and will probably go down as one of those collector items in South African investment history. Well done to Barry for putting together such a comprehensive read.

Title: Brett Kebble - The Inside Story
Author: Barry Sergeant
ISBN: 978-1-77007-306-7

You can buy the book from online retailer Loot for R166.00.

We rated the book a 3 out of 5 but found it very heavy going!

-------------------------------------------
Looking for books, video games, electronics and other goods? Want It All- S.A's Largest Online Shop Click Here

The International Rugby Encyclopedia

With the Currie Cup coming down to "the business end" I thought this book would be quite a nice one to highlight courtesy of Fanatics:

The International Rugby Encyclopedia is meticulously compiled and has been 18 years in the making. This book is the complete international rugby encyclopedia that presents every single recognized international rugby game ever played since 1871 when Scotland took on England. It is well illustrated and structured, featuring stories on the great players to have graced the game, the great matches to have captivated the crowds and the great stadiums to have hosted these internationals, as well as a plethora of rugby trivia.

You can buy the book online or at your nearest Exclusive Books store for R399.

About the Author
Andrew de Klerk, with his almost pathological passion for rugby, was born in 1979, and grew up in Grahamstown where Saturday-morning rugby matches were strongly attended and vociferously supported by the locals. He was educated at St Andrew’s, Graeme College and Rhodes University in Grahamstown. He has a BSc (Hons) in Geology. Andrew is an avid bird-watcher and loves the bush (he once spent a year as a game ranger at Mala Mala near the Kruger National Park). He is a member of the Geological Society of South Africa, is married and now lives in Johannesburg.

Panic - Michael Lewis

"Panic" is the follow-up to the best-selling "Liars Poker" from Michael Lewis and is an absolute must-read for anybody who

has an interest in the stock-market and other financial markets.

For those who didn't read the first book and don't know Michael Lewis, he was a trader at one of the top trading firms in the US. He became disillusioned with the whole corporate culture on Wall Street and he jumped to the other side of the fence where he became a financial journalist.

Lewis' ability to interpret and get the inside story on Wall Street made for hellishly entertaining reading in Liars Poker.

"Panic" is the latest offering and here he details some of the most recent financial crises and tries to put in perspective much of the spin that the financial industry and media are putting out to justify recent events.

It is intriguing because it includes names like Bernie Madoff and his take on the markets prior to him being unveiled as a fraud in the latest crisis.

I found it lots of fun because it included different articles spanning nearly 20 years worth of financial news and the ability to chronicle financial events from a whole lot of different perspectives. It included all the hype before the Asian crisis, the tech bubble etc and then the review of what went wrong

Title: Panic - The Story of Modern Financial Insanity
Author: Michael Lewis
ISBN: 978-0-14-104231-2

Loot price: R123.00 (eligible for free delivery on orders over R200 - see banner right)
Normal retail price: R150
You save: R27.00 (18%)

This book is lots of fun and if you have even a passing interest in financial markets then you will love this one.

Rated it a 4 out of 5