Average customer rating:
- You've got to be kidding
- Never enough
|
Paintings of Paul Cezanne : A Catalogue Raisonne
John Rewald
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
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ASIN: 0810940442 |
Customer Reviews:
You've got to be kidding.......2005-07-27
John Rewald,you should be ashamed.$400 for a lousy 50 color plates(I live in Australia,and it sells for $650).If you're going to put out a catalogue raisonne of an artist,you should have the majority of the works in color,no-one wants to look at b/w reproductions anymore.You just have to compare this with the magnificent catalogue raisonne's on Rothko,Gauguin and Sargent,to see how this work falls short.A major dissappointment.
Never enough.......2005-01-21
There's either never be the right info you're looking for or there's never enough!
Average customer rating:
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Prints Of Rufino Tamayo, The (Artes Visuales Turner)
Ramiro MartInez
Manufacturer: Turner/Fundacion Rufino Tamayo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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Similar Items:
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Tamayo: A Modern Icon Reinterpreted
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Andy Warhol Prints: A Catalogue Raisonné 1962-1987
ASIN: 8475066186
Release Date: 2004-06-02 |
Book Description
This bilingual (English-Spanish) catalogue raisonna of Rufino Tumayo's prints will reproduce in color every print--including xylographies, lithographies, silkscreens, artist's books, and the late mixographies--ever made by the great Mexican artist. Tamayo made approximately 320 prints between 1925 and 1991. Many of them were made using different inks, and these ink colors are respected in the catalogue's printing; in several cases, the printing processes themselves will also be reproduced. Comprehensive and expert commentary is made on each print regarding print-run, workshop, and publisher. This project has taken the Tamayo Museum and Foundation in Mexico City almost ten years of research to complete.
Book Description
*Prices for silver, gold, platinum and palladium are at a 26-year high
*Features 2,000 more high quality coin images from the world's leading auction houses
An indispensable reference for collectors of 19th century coins, this guide delivers descriptive and metallic details plus invaluable pricing, in five grades of condition, for everything from tokens and patterns to sets and standard issues. With prices for classic coins driving the market in Europe, and collector interest driving the prices in Russia, and the significant increase in general coin collecting by the Peoples Republic of China driving the entire market, it's clear there's a world of collectors in need of information only provided by this comprehensive catalog of 19th century world coins.
Customer Reviews:
Standard Catalog of World Coins 1801-1900.......2007-04-11
This publication is essential for anyone buying, selling or evaluating coins.
Been reading it for 49 years.......2007-03-12
This is the most comprehensive coin catalogue and when put together with Catalogue of World Coins 1901 - 2006, it really gives you an accurate picture and value report of what you have in your collection or are thinking about adding to it.
Standard Catalog of World Coins:1801-1900.......2007-01-10
Material is horribly dated. Publication date apparently 2004, using 2001-2003 price date. Effectively useless.
You MUST show date of publication in description of item.
Not likely to buy again.
Content Missing (contained in previous editions)........2007-01-10
Readers will find missing the following (there is probably more):-
Philippines silver 1880-1885
Large amounts of Indonesian &/or Neth. E. Indies.
Egyptian 5 Ghirsh AH1293.
Getting Off to a Good Start and More.......2006-03-22
This is a publication of note. Highly informative for the beginner or seasoned collector there is a certain lure for these magnificent looking coins and abundant information on them. I will have to admit that I was certainly intrigued by this publication and spent several hours rummaging through the information contain herein. I have collected coins on and off for years and this was a good place to start and jump back in to that rewarding and enriching hobby.
Book Description
From 1874 to 1882, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) produced more than 200 paintings and water-colors aside from portraiture, including figures in landscape settings, architectural studies, seascapes, subject paintings, and studies after old masters. From powerful studies of models in Paris in the mid-1870s to compelling paintings set in Venice in the early 1880s, the works published in this volume of the catalogue raisonné show the variety of his aesthetic responses. He worked in the studio and en plein air, travelling widely during the eight years covered in this volume and painting in Paris, Brittany, Capri, Spain, North Africa, and Venice.
This is the first time that Sargent’s early work has been mapped so comprehensively. With very few exceptions, this beautifully produced book illustrates all the pictures under discussion in color. Each painting, including several which have never been published before, is documented in depth with full provenance, exhibition history, and bibliography, and in many cases new information is provided. The volume also reproduces a wealth of Sargent’s preliminary and related drawings and of comparative works by other artists.
Customer Reviews:
Awesome Selection of Sargent's Work.......2007-07-20
The color reproductions are awesome. This books is a collection of Sargent's less known work which is refreshing. Some oils are not as polished as the more well known work which helps to show his technique in early stages---a plus to serious professionals and students. To me, this book provided a wealth of visual clues to understanding his thought process and technical principles. The writing, however, is the typical stuff used to fill most coffee table books. No insight whatsoever into Sargent's painting principles, tonal procedures or color palette. The author obviously knows little in that regard but there is so much information out there the text could have been more illuminating. Buy it for the reproduction quality and awesome collection of works. Worth every penny in that regard.
John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1874-1882; Complete Paintings: Volume IV(Complete Paintings).......2007-05-20
Still waiting for the delivery of Sargent's Figures and Landscapes. It was ordered on 4/14. Hope it will be delivered soon.
Deirdre Dunne
many obscure paintings.......2007-03-28
i was very pleasantly surprised to see so many Sargent paintigs and drawings i had never seen before. Some quite obscure images in color - many studies and sketches - things that interest other artists and Sargent fans - I have not read much of the content yet but the little I have read was very interesting, although not of great use to artists in that there is not much description of Sargents working methods (although there was some) - but this is usually the case with monographs - much history but not much instruction. So as artists we must learn mainly from the paintings - which fortunately are very well reproduced in this volume.
another wonderful Sargent book.......2007-03-26
This volume like the portrait volumes has beautiful illustrations ( fairly important for someone like Sargent!) and comparisons to others working in his time and place.
it's something you can look at and reread-- and it can be done in sections-- time and again
An Amateur Artist's opinion.......2007-01-09
I found this book to be so comprehensive, that it will be invaluable to any artist, amateur or professional - will keep me engrossed for a long. long time to come.
Book Description
At last, construction begins on a new library for Bellehaven, a gift of Franklin Harrington, scion of old Bellehaven money, and one of the locally famous Harrington triplets. But when a freak snowstorm hits, Bellehaven is brought to its knees. Not so Miss Helma Zukas who is at her post, dispensing library information, overseeing wayward employees, and soothing a busload of stranded gamblers.
Suddenly, an explosion rocks the snowy day, destroying the library site, killing the benefactor and a penny–pinching city finance czar.
The snow melts but not trouble. Shockingly, Ms. Moon thrusts the new library project onto Helma. And Helma soon discovers why, uncovering secrets and shady dealings from start to finish – secrets in the library, in the City, and in the Harrington family – secrets worth killing for.
Customer Reviews:
A low-keyed comedy of murder.......2007-08-31
The unflappable Miss Zukas is a delight, as are the internal politics of the Bellehaven Public Library. Unfortunately, the plot hinges on a preposterous device -- work has begun on building a new library on a choice piece of real estate without there being anything in writing anywhere to show that this is what the donor intends to build. If you can accept this as a given, you'll enjoy Catalogue of Death.
Miss Zukas Mysteries.......2007-07-15
I am a great fan of Jo Dereske's writing. Miss Zukas, although rather uptight and solitary, is a very sensible and believable character. Miss Zukas's character is evolving and developing into a person who can be more comfortable with risks and relationships.
New library site threatened.......2007-05-24
Miss Helma Zukas, intrepid librarian, is very much looking forward to a new library building for Bellehaven, Washington. The site for the new building has been generously donated by Franklin Harrington, a prominent Bellehaven citizen. An unusual snowstorm hits town, but Miss Zukas is determined to get to work, whatever the difficulties. She arrives and is greeted by a skeleton crew and a visit from Mr. Harrington himself. Franklin decides to visit the library building site, but unfortunately there is an explosion and the elderly philanthropist is killed. Miss Zukas' boss, Ms. Moon, is concerned that Mr. Harrington's heirs may not want the library project to continue, so she asks Miss Zukas to talk to them. Soon, Helma is gathering information about the agreement between the library and the Harringtons and is also trying to find out who killed Franklin. The more she delves into the Harrington family, the more secrets she finds out about them. Author Jo Dereske has created an interesting character in the prim and proper Miss Zukas and she injects just the right amount of red herrings to keep things interesting,
Just okay.......2007-05-13
A snowstorm has hit Belhaven, and Miss Helma Zukas, the stereotypical librarian, finds herself in the midst of yet another mystery. This installment is not as interesting as others in the series.
Pleasant.......2007-05-10
My anticipation may have ruined part of my enjoyment. This is the first Miss Zukas book that I've had to wait for - so expectations were high. This was not my favorite one.
Helma was the same as always; practical, purposeful and in the end, solved the mystery. Each of the characters were written consistently from the other books. The story flowed well and kept me turning pages into the night. Long-standing relationships progressed slowly or not at all; Wayne Gallant and Helma, Ruth and Paul, Helma and Boy Cat. There was less character development in this one than in the others.
Once again, the cover has little to do with the content. The cat was never in the library or had bloody feet. And the card catalogue didn't figure largely in the mystery either.
The reason why this isn't my favorite and it didn't get 5 stars is that the ending was a let down for me. It seemed anti-climatic after building up to the end point all those pages and the "culprit" was a disappointment as well. It didn't seem like the stakes were high enough in the end. This ended up differently from the other Zukas mysteries without the nail biting finish.
But it was an enjoyable read besides that. I'll still look forward to reading the next in the series and will hope that my misgivings on this book, won't happen in the next.
Average customer rating:
- Comprehensive tour du force
- The Ultimate Collection of Monet Paintings
|
Monet: Catalogue Raisonne
Daniel Wildenstein , and
Claude Monet
Manufacturer: Benedikt Taschen Verlag
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 3822885592 |
Customer Reviews:
Comprehensive tour du force.......1999-09-02
A must-have for any student of Monet. Volumne I contains covers his biography proper, while volumes II-IV provide a COMPLETE record of the artist's body of work.
Wilderstein protrays Monet life for the most part as that of a debtor. However to his credit, he tempers the romantic "suffering artist" idealism with insight into Monet the creditor. By illustrating what a jackass the artist could also be, the author creates a deep and lively narrative.
Most of the personal insight into Monet come to us by way of coorespondance with Alice Hoeschede. Due to 'appearances' however she requested of Monet her letters be destroyed immediately and thus we're sadly left with a one-sided portrait of the man. While his artistic talents we're unparalled, it's his devotation to correspondance that allows Wildenstein to bring him back to life. Without giving away the ending, it's Monet's inability to write rather than paint that signals the end.
The Ultimate Collection of Monet Paintings.......1998-02-08
This is the most comprehensive collection of Monet's Paintings as its name implies. The handsome 4-volume set, published in 1996, comes with 2,580 illustrations in 1,540 pages.
Volume I is a complete biography of the Artist in details, that also contains partial correspondence.
Volumes II-IV catalogue 2,050 paintings, listed in Wildenstein Number in chronological order, with text in French, English, and German. Each entry includes:
1. Technical data ("W" number, title, size (in centimeters), and signature
2. List of Exhibitions
3. Exhaustive Bibliography
4. Provenance, detailing history from its origin
5. Brief commentary
Volume II: W1 (1858) - W968 (1885)
Volume III: W969 (1885) - W1595 (1899-1901)
Volume IV: W1596 (1900) - W1983 (1926), and the Donation to the Musee de l'Orangerie, Paris
Including in Volume IV: Exhaustive Bibliography; List of Expositions from 1858 to 1995; Index of Collectors, Galleries, and Museums; and Analytical Index of the Subjects.
Its previous 5-volume black-and-white edition cost more than US$10,000, and were found only in large museums or major universities' art department. This is the chance for any serious Monet fan to own this monumental work at a highly affordable price!
Book Description
Among the most talked-about names in contemporary architecture, the firm of Diller + Scofidio has for the last two decades redefined what architecture can be. Through site-specific, highly conceptual works such as the acclaimed redesign of the famed Brasserie restaurant in New York City's Seagram Building, to the "Blur" building, created for the Swiss Expo 2002 and composed entirely of mist, the firm has consistently challenged and expanded the role of architecture and design in our technology-oriented environment.
In this first-ever comprehensive survey of the work of this internationally recognized firm, published to accompany a traveling exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, 10 of Diller + Scofidio's most important site-specific pieces are examined, along with several of the artifacts they have created in order to examine issues of gender, surveillance, place, and travel. With essays by respected scholars and a contribution by contemporary artist Laurie Anderson, this fully illustrated volume offers a compelling look at the work of Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio.
Customer Reviews:
The Aberrant Architecture of Diller + Scofidio.......2003-06-08
The companion book to an exhibition at the Whitney, which runs through June 1, is a work of art in itself. The lenticular plastic cover shimmers enigmatically; folded pages with elliptical cuts allow you to peer inside, propelling you through the book in search of what can be imperfectly glimpsed. It's an appropriate, teasing metaphor for this collection of installations, exhibits, and as yet unrealized projects, plus Blur from the Swiss Expo 02. Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio ponder our obsession with display and call everything into question. (Michael Webb is the book reviewer for LA Architect magazine.)
Customer Reviews:
Not even for Warhol fans.......2006-08-08
The main problem with this book is the layout of each page into three columns, thus all the pictures are quite small. So this is not a book to really enjoy the art. The text is also often far from essential, for example it contains relevant quotes from "The Andy Warhol diaries" or "Popism", which any Warhol fan will already have. It is worth remembering most of the original prints/paintings are measured in meters, so there is little satisfaction in looking at passport-photo sized pictures. "The Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonne" is really only a reference book for art galleries or perhaps art collectors, and I'd recommend Warhol fans to stay away from this extremely expensive purchase, it contains zero enjoyment compared to leafing through the superb "Giant Warhol", where the appreciation of the immensity of Warhol's work can be much better appreciated.
GREAT! (except for the design).......2002-04-15
WOW. This is a real work of research. The amount of detail and care that has gone into this study of Warhol's early paintings is not to be believed. The editors have compiled a completely staggering amount of information about each work shown here--and who knew there were so many original paintings?
My only complaint is the book's design, which doesn't seem to have anything to do with Warhol's own aesthetic. The pictures are beautiful, but the words are tough on the eyes--the table of contents is especially awful. This is really a shame, because you can see pictures of Warhol paintings in lots of places. I don't know where you'd find all this wonderful data, though. (Put it on CD-ROM!)
It's definitely an expensive book, but unmatched, as far as I can tell, in its field. Bravo!
Average customer rating:
- Exhaustive Reference, Frustrating to use
- in requiem
- Great for in-print stuff, but leaves out older stuff
- Great but an obvious British Bias
- Jazz is African
|
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings: Eighth Edition (Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings)
R. M. Cook , and
Brian Morton
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia
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The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs Yearbook 2006/07 Edition (Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and Dvds Yearbook)
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Gramophone Classical Good CD, DVD & Download Guide 2007 (Classical Good CD, DVD, & Download Guide) (Classical Good CD, DVD, & Download Guide)
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The Penguin Guide to Blues Recordings
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The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs 2005/06 Edition: The Key Classical Recordings on CD, DVD and SACD, 30th Anniversary Edition (Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and Dvds)
ASIN: 0141023279 |
Book Description
The leading guide to recorded jazz, now extensively revised
Music fans have been turning to this established reference through seven editions as a source of intelligent and insightful criticism. Fully updated to incorporate thousands of additional recordings, the eighth edition features artist biographies, detailed recording information with labels and catalog numbers, reliable and authoritative ratings, the authors' personal selection of the essential recordings for every collection, an index of artists, and more.
Customer Reviews:
Exhaustive Reference, Frustrating to use.......2007-09-22
This is an incredible reference, It just plain has a ton of stuff in here. It covers almost everyone in great detail and is a valuable part of my jazz library.
but, the book is frustrating to use. I just hate the rating system, it needs something better. Maybe 10 stars instead or something. Nearly everything in here is either 3, 3 1/2 or 4 stars and not everything is the same. Of the many titles rated 4 stars there are radical differences between them. It's just not a very good system.
that's about all I can say - it's the best thing out there that I know of but if you want a more comprehensive reference it is just not realistic to expect it all in one book. This is as much as you can get into a book pretty much. It's better to get several different ones and then you'll have a good idea.
in requiem.......2007-09-07
Various editions of this book has been my guide to jazz for over 10 years and in some funny way I feel like I know the authors personally. Of course, I don't but it was no less sad to hear that Richard Cook died of cancer a week ago at the not very old age of 50. Jazz and jazz lovers have lost a great friend and promoter. My sentiments to all who did know him.
Great for in-print stuff, but leaves out older stuff.......2007-07-27
This works great when you're buying today's music. But to keep the size manageable 1,500+ pages, they leave out albums when they go out of print. That lessens its value when trying to see how older releases hold up in the scheme of things.
Great but an obvious British Bias.......2007-06-18
Every applause lavished on this guide by other reviewers is right on the mark. It is indispensable. However, the British bias is often irritating. When a good 10% of all top marks for individual CDs go to recordings by British jazz players and when British saxophonist Evan Parker gets more top marks for his records than Charlie Parker, you know that the reviewers are a more than tad chauvinistic, to say the least.
Jazz is African.......2007-05-07
Jazz is African. Jazz music comes from a place -an exclusive reality marked by poverty and anti bourgeoise values. It is unfortunate that all the jazz festivals and audiences are bourgeois. Their commercial values will never be able to purchase jazz-African. They will only understand the commericial values and not the true essence of Jazz- African music. For Africans, music has always been an expression of our exclusive and dire reality. Caucasians will never understand it because it is simply not thier reality of commercialism, debauchery and intemperance. long live non bourgeois, non commercial African jazz.
Book Description
"This exceptional book provides valuable insights into the evolution of financial economics from the perspective of a major player."
-- Robert Litzenberger, Hopkinson Professor Emeritus of Investment Banking, Univ. of Pennsylvania; and retired partner, Goldman Sachs
A History of the Theory of Investments is about ideas -- where they come from, how they evolve, and why they are instrumental in preparing the future for new ideas. Author Mark Rubinstein writes history by rewriting history. In unearthing long-forgotten books and journals, he corrects past oversights to assign credit where credit is due and assembles a remarkable history that is unquestionable in its accuracy and unprecedented in its power.
Exploring key turning points in the development of investment theory, through the critical prism of award-winning investment theory and asset pricing expert Mark Rubinstein, this groundbreaking resource follows the chronological development of investment theory over centuries, exploring the inner workings of great theoretical breakthroughs while pointing out contributions made by often unsung contributors to some of investment's most influential ideas and models.
Download Description
""This exceptional book provides valuable insights into the evolution of financial economics from the perspective of a major player.""-- Robert Litzenberger, Hopkinson Professor Emeritus of Investment Banking, Univ. of Pennsylvania; and retired partner, Goldman Sachs A History of the Theory of Investments is about ideas -- where they come from, how they evolve, and why they are instrumental in preparing the future for new ideas. Author Mark Rubinstein writes history by rewriting history. In unearthing long-forgotten books and journals, he corrects past oversights to assign credit where credit is due and assembles a remarkable history that is unquestionable in its accuracy and unprecedented in its power. Exploring key turning points in the development of investment theory, through the critical prism of award-winning investment theory and asset pricing expert Mark Rubinstein, this groundbreaking resource follows the chronological development of investment theory over centuries, exploring the inner workings of great theoretical breakthroughs while pointing out contributions made by often unsung contributors to some of investment's most influential ideas and models.
Customer Reviews:
A Treasure Trove of Historical Context.......2006-11-25
I'm about halfway through the book and must say that I have been pleasantly surprised. I bought the book as a quick way to present accurate historical context to my students. In my opinion, knowledge does not grow; it evolves. A study of that evolution, with the paths not chosen, is an important step in mastering a discipline. This would be enough for me to recommend the book, but there's much more.
Here's a small sample of the items that I've gleaned so far.
What is the intersection of business math, gambling gmaes, and Pascal's triangle? (The graphic that he uses look suspiciously like a binomial tree....) The shift from insurance products to investments as the driver of the mathematics of finance. What is the Fisher separation theorem (which my students consider to be obvious) and why is it not obvious? The importance of the Ph.D. thesis of John Burr Williams, one of the most important economists of which you've probably never heard. How Ben Graham nearly got the Modigliani-Miller theorem but didn't believe that his conclusion was realistic.
This is just from the first hundred pages. I've already bought about a dozen books to extend my reading and am downloading dozens of articles from JSTOR. Most of us learned investment theory from a textbook. I strongly suggest that you add this book, and its contextual knowledge, to your library.
Not bad as a bibliography, but so what?.......2006-10-28
A better book for the layman is anything by William Bernstein. As Nobel Prize winner Sharpe says on the cover, this is a "idiosyncratic and eclectic" book--a bibliography that's annotated.
After you have learned a subject, of course it's fun to go through archival historic documents and comment on them. Every discipline does this. But it proves nothing except erudition.
One problem I have with this book is that it doesn't teach you anything you don't already know--and if you don't already know it, you won't learn it from this book.
Also it's too expensive, except by those who wish to put on airs and display it on their bookshelf.
Finally, nearly all the vaunted theories of finance have analogs (and digital equivalents) in applied mathematics used in electrical engineering and physics. You could argue that financial engineering is simply cribbing these fields.
BTW I have not read this book, but have added it to my 'wish list' and eventually will get around to reading it.
Probably one of the best books I have ever read.......2006-06-12
This is arguably one of the best books that I have read. Almost everything relevant to finance and investments is covered in this book, including a good historical discussion of the theories of investment. In addition, Mark Rubinstein has a very clear and simple writing style that transforms complex concepts into words. The proofs are done in a fashion that most readers can understand, and the sections are divided up in easy to break-up sections. This is definitely a must read for any serious student of finance. All of the seminal work in finance is discussed in this text, and this can be used as a guide to asset pricing, corporate finance, investments, and other finance courses. In fact, I would have used this as a supplement to reading journal articles if it were available in the past.
Rubinstein has done it agian!.......2006-04-25
This book is excellent; it gives a new insight in the history of discoveries in financial economics like no other book. The book is nicely organized with a very useful "Index of Ideas".
What is the ancient history of Pascal's triangle, that again is an important building block for the Cox-Ross-Rubinstein binomial tree? Who was the first to circulate a paper on how time varying volatility was related to fat tailed distributions? The book has some interesting surprises for most of us, and along this historical path Rubinstein shares detailed wisdom on many financial models.
Espen G. Haug
Author of "The Complete Guide to Option Pricing Formulas"
Stunning, Imaginative, Accurate.......2006-03-07
Mark Rubinstein is a man who likes to think for himself, which is a good thing for the rest of us. Most readers will be familiar with Mark's contributions to financial economics primarily through his co-authorship, with John Cox and Steve Ross, of the binomial options pricing model - no mean feat, that. But his interests and contributions are far more broad. My personal favorite paper of Mark's is his relatively overlooked "The Strong Case for the Generalized Logarithmic Utility Model as the Premier Model of Financial Markets" [GLUM], published in 1977 as the second chapter of Haim Levy and Marshall Sarnatt's "Financial Decision Making under Uncertainty" (Academic Press New York 1977); this is a wonderful model which places restrictions on tastes a la Arrow, Debreau, Hirshleifer, Cass, Stiglitz , Hakansson, Kraus, Grauer and Litzenberger, rather than placing restrictions on beliefs as in the more conventional models commonly understood to represent "Modern Portfolio Theory", i.e., Markowitz, Sharpe, Treynor, Lintner, Mossin, Fama, Jensen, Black, Scholes and Merton. In the 1977 GLUM paper, Rubinstein notes that the latter, MPT-type, models are not necessarily superior to the former type and chalks their popularity up to historical happenstance and ideological path-dependence: "Men were not lacking in evidence, but inherited habits of thought, which often extended beyond science proper to a worldview, [and] caused them to cling stubbornly to superannuated ideas."
In "A History of the Theory of Investments", Rubinstein achieves two things: first, he presents his own annotated bibliography of nearly 200 of the most important works in theoretical financial economics; second, he presents a much better etiology of these ideas than a reader might find in a textbook presentation, working diligently to correct examples of Robert K. Merton's "Matthew effect". Marrying these two objectives, a daunting task for most mere mortals, seems to have been easy for Mark Rubinstein. He notes, "...much of the forgotten truth about the origins of ideas in financial economics is there for all to see, in older books residing on library shelves or in past journals now often available in electronic form [e.g., JSTOR]. Much of the history of investments has only been rewritten by the victors, and can be corrected from primary sources." As a student, and later as a professor and even practitioner, Rubinstein spent untold time poring through countless thousands of documents -- primary material, methodically working his way forward and backward through the more and less famous papers and their citations and references in the literature, in order to learn these ideas for himself. Along the way he contributed quite a bit himself. A gift to us all was his willingness to publish his notes on each of what he deems to be the 180 or so most important contributions to the field.
Delineating three periods in the literature as "ancient" (pre-1950), "classical" (1950 - 1980, and "modern" (post-1980), Rubinstein educates us about 40 ancient papers, from Leonardo of Pisa's 1202 "Liber Abaci" through Leonard Jimmie Savage's 1954 "Foundations of Statistics", including the works of Pascal, Fermat, Huygens, de Witt, Halley, de Moivre, Bernoulli, Pareto, Arrow, Bachelier, Knight, Keynes, Working, Hicks, Fisher, Cowles, Graham, Williams, Macaulay, von Hayek, von Neumann, Morgenstern, Friedman, and others, even throwing in Kahneman and Tversky's 1979 Prospect Theory for good measure.
Following the "ancient" literature with the "classical" works, Rubinstein precedes Markowitz' 1952 "Portfolio Selection" with Clendenin's 1951 paper on stock price volatility. More than 100 papers are discussed in this section, including all the usual suspects as well as some unusual ones, including Roy, Arrow, Dreze (who along with others anticipated Harrison & Kreps' work on martingales and continuous states), Kendall, Cootner, Friedman, Tobin, Modigliani & [Merton] Miller (whose work was anticipated by J.B. Williams, in his 1938 "Law of the Conservation of Investment Value"), Debreau, Osborne, Alexander, Coase, Muth, Lucas, Stiglitz, Sharpe, Samuelson, Lorie, Pratt, Linter, Mossin, Treynor, Fama, Cohen, Pogue, Farrell, King, Rosenberg, Engle, Hakansson, Jensen, Leland, Roll, MacBeth, Litzenberger, Cass, Black, Scholes, [Robert C.] Merton, Hirshleifer, Rubinstein, Blume, Friend, Basu, Banz, Latane, LeRoy, Kraus, Cox, Grossman, Figlewski, Ross, Malkiel, Varian, Constantinides, Geske, [Edward] Miller, Levy, Rendleman, Bartter, concluding with Breeden's 1979 ICAPM. Rubinstein also includes Merton's 1987 "Simple Model" in the classical period.
Rubinstein's last section, the "modern" period, which admittedly contains little of the behavioral finance literature, covers about 30 significant papers from the famous Grossman and Stiglitz 1980 critique and Leland's 1980 paper on portfolio insurance to Brunnermeier and Parker's 2005 paper on asset pricing bubbles. Researchers in this section include many of those listed in the classical period, as well as Diamond, Verrecchia, [Ken] French, Schwert, Binder, Merges, Mehra, Prescott, Hong, Stein, Ohlson, Berk, Wang, Carhart, Daniel, Grinblatt, Titman, Wermers, Green, Naik, Sagi, Abreu, and Parker.
I wish Rubinstein's excellent History had been available back when I was a student roaming the stacks in the Lippincott library at Penn, poking into old dusty tomes and spending what little money I had Xeroxing all of those old wonderful papers, learning "ancient" and "classical" ideas the hard way. From the APT to the Zero-beta CAPM, Mark Rubinstein has covered about 300 individual ideas in this unparalleled bibliography, with informed and detailed (but economical) discussion of nearly 200 worthy papers. Any serious financial economist should read, and re-read, this exquisite book.
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