Currency of the Heart: A Year of Investing, Death, Work, and Coins (The Iowa Series)

Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary read
Review: I agree with the reviewer from Michigan. This is an amazing book -- very thoughtful, and thought-provoking with first-rate writing. I lost my own father a few years ago, so I found much to relate to here -- how the loss of a parent affects one, but also the evaluation of one's own life and character such an event sparks. After reading this book, one gains an entirely new perspective of the role of money in our lives -- how it indeed define us and our relationship to and with just about everything. An interesting and useful book for anyone facing the loss of a parent, and for all Baby Boomers finally accepting the need to grow up. (BTW -- This book is not as somber as it may sound -- the stories about coin collectors and their foibles are hysterical!)

Rating:
Summary: worth investing in
Review: I read about this book on salon.com and then was convinced by the enthusiastic reviews here. They're all right: it's great.

Rating:
Summary: An evocative work of uncommon wisdom
Review: In early 1998, Don Nichols began returning to Iowa from his life and job in Washington, DC, to be with his dying father and to oversee his parents' investments. A veteran investor who'd written eight personal finance books, Nichols found that managing the portfolio entrusted to him brought a larger understanding of money and mortality, family, love, his job at the U.S. Mint, and life choices he'd made.

Sad, funny, searching, and also financially savvy, "Currency of the Heart" is about the dimensions of investing, rediscovering family, honoring promises, the parting of a father and son, and a middle-aged son's new bond with an aging mother.

The review at Salon.com says it all: "The result is brilliant -- a book that is poetic in its prose, profound and yet effortlessly readable, a book that is full of humor and sorrow, confusion and loss and pride and joy. Time spent in Donald Nichols' head will simultaneously make you want to call your father, count your pennies, investigate whether you should be putting money in Treasury bonds, and wonder what kind of person, really, you are ... "Currency of the Heart" transcends a pathetic genre and delivers a masterpiece."