I've read Securities Analysis front to back (yea, I know... I'm a devoted fan) and The Intelligent Investor, among several other books on corporate business valuation - just to set my credentials at the top.



And I have to say, this is one of the most fun I've had reading a book in a while. While you may think Graham is horribly dry in his investment books--with his Victorian and impersonal English--here he does an excellent job at writing an entertaining narrative of his life. I actually found myself laughing-out-loud pretty hard at some of the lines in it.



The 30-page introduction by Seymour Chatman is also well-written. It does a good job of summarizing and highlighting the book. I'd recommend you also read it.



Even if you don't care about Graham, you can treat the book as an entertaining piece of fiction, if you like. The book is that much fun and the stories contained are sufficiently interesting by their own merit to keep any reader laughing, sobbing, and happily eager to read until the conclusion.



There is no book preview on amazon, so I will use this review to explain the general contents of the book:

Starting page - Chapter title

vii - Introduction by Seymour Chatman (roughly 30 pages long)

1 - Childhood in New York

19 - Family Tragedies and My Mother's Perseverance

37 - At Public School

55 - High School Days: Brooklyn and the Bronx

73 - The Farmhand and The Mechanic

93 - The College Student

123 - My Career Begins

141 - Early Years in Wall Street

163 - The Beginnings of Real Success

185 - The Great Bull Market of the 1920s: I Become a Near Millionaire

199 - The Northern Pipeline Contest

217 - Family and Other Affairs

247 - The Midpoint of Life's Way: The Deluge Begins

267 - The Road Back, 1933-1940

279 - My "Career" as a Playwright

293 - The Commodity Reserve Currency Plan

309 - Epilogue: Benjamin Graham's Self-Portrait at Sixty-Three and his Eightieth Birthday Speech

The post script contains:

317 - Chronology

327 - Notes

337 - Bibliography of Writings by and about Benjamin Graham

343 - Index



You will see from the chapter list that this book contains NO investment advice. Please read any edition of "Securities Analysis" (except the 5th edition is not co-authored by Graham, but written exclusively by Dodd and a few other people) and "The Intelligent Investor" for Graham's counsel and instruction on investment analysis.