This book seems to be targeted at financial professionals, or investors who are interested in being swayed towards socially responsible investing. It starts out with a description of different kinds of investors who would be interested, and provides arguments for SRI for each of the profiles. There seemed to be a lot of approaches to use in convincing someone to think in this way, but as someone who has already reached that point it wasn't very interesting to me.

As long time investors who have tried to prioritize socially responsible investing, I was hoping for more information how to broaden that. However only the last chapter talked about ways to looks for things to invest in. While this was useful information there was not nearly as much as I was hoping there would be.

I wasn't sure I would like this book during the first chapter, but after it got started, I found it quite enlightening; perhaps even beyond the intent of the author.

The book is a good book about investing your money in companies who are aligned with your political and moral beliefs, but as an extra bonus, it is an interesting insight into the workings of modern day political strategies, manipulations, and motivations.

OK, I'm not big into investing in the stock market. Don't get me wrong, I do have a 401K and make a small percentage investment in a few stocks. So this book did intrigue me, if I could learn something about investing and be socially responsible at the same time would definitely be a plus.

After reading the book, I have new knowledge about what exactly socially responsible investing (SRI) is and how using my own values will help dictate which stocks/companies I should invest. It is clear that the authors are academic as the book is well-organized, carefully researched while thoughtful cases/examples are used to further explain SRI. Some of the topics had to be read several times to get a clear understanding of the material presented as the word choice and concepts were new to this youthful investor. Even though the reading is dry and some of the concepts are challenging, the clear presentation and well documented resources bring value to the information. This is a great start in truly understanding SRI.

On a side note, when you step out to inform about social responsibility - you should also walk the walk. This book is printed on glossy acid-free paper with color print throughout, hardback with a glossy cover - while this makes the book look good, is it socially responsible?

Deltareviewer
Reviewing for Real Page Turners

I've never read another book like this, and I've never really given socially responsible investing (SRI) a thought. That changed after reading this book. The authors present a well researched, organized, and thoughtful case for the support and practice of SRI. They also provide a method for analyzing one's own investments and investing theories in light of SRI. The book is printed in color on glossy paper (which I personally don't care for too much), so the graphs are clear and easy on the eyes. They even use the color feature to color the text when they talk about their blue, red and yellow investor models. Throughout the book are blue sidebars with real life examples of things they talk about, from companies who are socially responsible, to laws and trends that make SRI the wave of the future. The authors also take care to continually relate their ideas back to actually making money, something that some investment books pushing alternate theories often do only sporadically. These guys really stay consistent and on the subject. I have to say, it is a very dry but not difficult read, and being a very scholarly work, the ideas it contains are well supported and fully explained. I doubt that I will change my own personal investment model and portfolio much, but I have to admit, this did give me some new and original ideas to think about.

The authors of this book bring us through case studies and discussions about the types of companies that we would invest in if we wanted invest responsibly. Bringing us through the history of investing in industries since religiously based investing avoided certain industries, this has grown into a whole new approach.

Now, people want to choose not only to stay away from companies involved in gambling, tobacco, fire arms and related, but also to invest in companies that are proactive in areas like the environment, employee treatment and the like. The authors give us indexing of portfolios that had most or all verses an open index using the S&P 500 as a comparison. They do a compare and contrast to encourage that type of investment and that maybe having a more narrow portfolio with the above in mind may not hurt you at all, and maybe even be a benefit to the investor.

I really learned a lot from this very quick and insightful read. My only take away is the many of sentences were verbose and not due to technicalities, just wordiness. A great addition to the library of the thoughtful investor.