Book Bits: 17 January 2026

● The Making of a Permabear: The Perils of Long-term Investing in a Short-term World
Jeremy Grantham with Edward Chancellor
Review via The Wall Street Journal
Buy low, sell high, get rich. Jeremy Grantham’s Wall Street career exactly conforms to this charmed sequence, but with what troubles along the way. The reader, at least, will be glad for them. They constitute the breath and the life of “The Making of a Permabear,” a memoir written with the financial journalist Edward Chancellor.
Mr. Grantham, a co-founder and longtime investment strategist at the Boston-based money-management firm GMO, can be said to have dug the ruts and potholes on his own bumpy road. He is a nonconformist. Worse, in the context of today’s flyaway stock market, he is a principled, value-minded, dogmatic nonconformist. He has nailed his colors to the mast of investment value (don’t overpay for stocks and bonds) and to the idea that profit margins and equity valuations never stray far from their respective long-term averages. He lays down the rule that “capital moves toward profits: excess returns attract competition and bad returns drive capital away. Pretty soon you have mean reversion.” Who can disagree?

● The Sovereign Debt Investor: An Essential Guide to Returns, Defaults, and Government Bond Investing
Lupin Rahman
Summary via publisher (Wiley)
In The Sovereign Debt Investor: An Essential Guide to Returns, Defaults, And Government Bonds, veteran investor and sovereign debt expert Lupin Rahman delivers expert insight into global government debt markets, highlighting the unique risks and compelling opportunities of this asset class. This book bring together expertise from the world of bond investing, policy making, academia and law to which bring to life specific issues and intricacies in sovereign debt investing.

● The Bookie: Inside the High-Stakes World of Sports Betting―A Legendary Bookmaker’s Tale of Gangsters, Celebrities, and the Art of the Game
Art Manteris
Review via Kirkus Reviews
A first-generation Greek American from a Pittsburgh family of oddsmakers and gamblers, Manteris fell into the family trade almost by accident, after a string of youthful indiscretions sent his plans to be a Hollywood stuntman astray and stranded him in Vegas for what turned out to be his life. He worked his way up from changing the odds board by hand at the mob-owned Stardust Hotel on the Strip (when it was more of a strip mall in the desert than a row of luxury real estate) to innovating sports bookmaking, most notably at Caesars Palace and the Las Vegas Hilton’s SuperBook. “Most people have opinions about sports, and most think their opinions are better than the next guy’s,” he says to explain the simple appeal of sports gambling. “Having an opinion is one thing, but backing up an opinion with cash—that takes confidence and guts.”

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