Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip

I have learned more about the world from Adventure Capitalist than from any other book I've ever read. In case you're not familiar with the author, Jim Rogers, he's an Alabama boy who moved to New York to become one of the most legendary investors in Wall Street history. He co-founded the Quantum Fund, one of the best-performing hedge funds of all time, in 1973 with partner George Soros and "retired" in 1980 at the age of thirty-eight. The Quantum Fund gained over 4,000% during its first ten years. In addition, Jim Rogers and George Soros are legendary for making a billion dollars for the fund during a single day of currency trading. Jim is particularly famous for investing in stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities, and everything and anything else--long and short--all over the world. If a truck of coffee beans turns over in Columbia, Jim can tell you how it will affect pork belly futures the next day. Jim chronicled his first trip around the world, on a motorcycle no less, in Investment Biker. Adventure Capitalist is his report of a three-year trip around the world at the turn of the millennium (1999, 2000, and 2001) through 116 countries. No motorcycle this time though. With his beautiful fiancee Paige accompanying him (they married during the trip), they traveled in a custom-built, four-wheel-drive, convertible, Sunburst Yellow Mercedes. The book is non-stop adventure supplemented with Jim's excellent political and economic commentary. Here are some quotes that I highlighted in the book: "Ulan Bator, the capitol of Mongolia, is perhaps the most technologically up-to-date city in the world, totally digital. With the fall of the Soviet Union, a free and independent Mongolia benefited from numerous sources of foreign aid, and with no infrastructure to upgrade, it leapfrogged about three generations of technology. The whole city is wired with fiber-optic cable, enabling you to jack into the Web from almost any phone in town... Everybody in Mongolia has a digital cell phone. The nation's nomads, crossing the country on horseback, carry them. There is a cell phone in most yurts." "The liberator of the Ivory Coast and its first president was Felix Houphouet-Boigny... He was going to make the country's cathedral larger than Saint Peter's until the pope intervened. In the end, at the pontiff's urging, he made it two centimeters smaller." "Tanzania, in my opinion, when it comes to tourism, is the single best country in Africa... it has not yet been overrun by foreign visitors... It has beautiful beaches on the Indian Ocean. It has the exotic, ancient island of Zanzibar... It has game parks that are unique in the world, teeming with animals... Tanzania is one of the safest countries in Africa. And it is cheap... There were animals everywhere. And no people." "In India, self-described as a great incubator of information technology, we could not even use mobile phones universally. We had to buy a different phone for almost every city. A m

Jim Rogers may never hit the list of top 10 best selling authors but that's not because his latest book lacks any of the important characteristics of a bestseller. The only disqualifier is self-imposed by the author. The book is designed to blow away many common illusions and prejudices about the world we live in. It is not the stuff popular fiction is made of. Jim is a former hedge fund manager who retired at 37, following a successful stint on Wall Street alongside George Soros. In the early nineties he published his first book Investment Biker, a story of his round-the-world trip by motorcycle. His new book called Adventure Capitalist-The Ultimate Road Trip describes his second round-the-world trip, this time by a custom built Mercedes-Benz car. He set out with his wife Paige and a team of two other guys in 1999. The trip took them on a 240,000 kilometer journey through 116 countries and ended three years later. I believe that this book should be required reading at schools and colleges not just because it beats Phileas Fogg's journey hands down in intellectual stimulation, but because the book is also a compendium of free-market ideas and live comparative social analysis. Jim's starting point was to search for investment opportunities. He set out with the open mind of a moneymaker on pilgrimage to find the truth about market conditions. He is looking for profitable opportunities, businesses and countries to invest in and is not prepared to accept conventional wisdom, official or ideological distortions. He has equal contempt for the party politics in US as with those of any other country he visits. He lashes out against Turkmenbashi, the dictator in charge of Turkmenistan, for perpetuating his own brand of Stalinist cult of personality and destroying the country in the process. But then shows the same contempt for President Bush for confusing devaluation with depreciation and also with former President Clinton who he blames for failing to observe and react to the creation and bursting of the biggest market bubble in decades. "I would cast a pox on both their houses-the Democrats and the Republicans" he proclaims in exasperation. Adventure Capitalist exposes some official and popular myths for what they are in a way that made me look at politics and religion from a very different perspective. In China, Jim tells of attending service in a Chinese Christian Church, where the local worshipers, while singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" never realized that in lands as far as North Carolina there are people like Jesse Helms who are frothing at the mouth while bemoaning religious persecution in their country. Despite not being able to obtain a visa to drive freely though Iran, Jim still admits to holding some small investments in the country and suggests forgetting the official analysis coming from Washington. "...there is a lot of positive change coming from Iran." he claims. Jim squarely lays the blame on the British for their Imperial invention of

Review of Adventure Capitalist, by Jim RogersReviewer: Mark Lamendola, MBA, and author of over 3500 articles in print or online.In 1999, I began tracking an incredible journey chronicled each month by Jim Rogers in Worth Magazine. I'm a front to back reader, but I made an exception to that rule by going directly to Rogers' column and reading it first. In a moment, you'll see why I felt so compelled to do that.First, let's move back a few years. Mark Benjamin, with whom I attended grade school, walked around the world in the 1990s. He got a frost-bitten thumb in the Sahara while doing so! The insight he gained from his journey amazed me. Anyone who can travel the world, I mean really travel it up close, has a fascinating story to tell. Unfortunately, Mark didn't write a book about his adventures.However, we all have an opportunity to read about another inquisitive mind making a journey "up close and personal" to 116 countries. Only this time, it's not Mark Benjamin walking. Nor is it Jim Rogers on a motorcycle (another amazing story, chronicled in The Investment Biker). This time, it's Jim Rogers with the beautiful Paige Parker, in a customized bright yellow Mercedes. And what a story they have to tell.The Adventure Capitalist is a book you can read for entertainment or for education. You can read it for both, if you wish. One thing you cannot do with this book is easily set it down once you start reading it. Believe me, I tried.On the adventure side, I was chewing my nails when troops from the Angolan Army stopped them at gunpoint and refused to let them go further. I won't spoil the story for you, but it was definitely exciting. And their trek across Siberia was chilling due to more than the weather. The account of Rogers' encounter with a Russian Mafia chief immediately brought to mind Robert Ludlum's thriller novels. Truth is often stranger than fiction, and in this case it's downright intriguing.The real value of Adventure Capitalist to me is the insight. I found the book immensely informative. The combination of facts, figures, and logic impressed me, but the way Rogers put them together reminds me of what happens when those big lights go on at a football stadium-you can see things that you couldn't see before.I now clearly understand which country will dominate the 21st century and why. I now know why the monetary policy of the USA (like that of most nations)is insane, not just unsound as I had previously described it.And I now know what our insanely unsound monetary policy means for people all over the world, and how dire the consequences are becoming for the millions of folks in countries like Argentina. Even more, I can see past propaganda, such as the idea that a nation that downsized its navy from 200 aircraft carriers to 12 and ran out of missiles in Afghanistan (and again in Iraq) is a "military superpower."The consequences of mismanagement, incompetence, and corruption at the highest levels of government (and it just rolls downhill

Jim Rogers has taken the great American notion of a road trip, and made it into a sensational read. I was really taken by his first book, i.e. Investment Biker, and followed his next trip via his website. Each time I checked his site, my interst in the book to come increased, and I was not disappointed. I think that Mr. Rogers might have about 5 more books from this one trip, and each one would be better and more insightful as he mulls over the things that he saw and experienced and has the time to take a longer view. I will look forward to buying those future books should they come to pass. The book is well written, thoughtful and persuasive as to the the failings of our foreign policy. It's too bad that national leadership seems to be fashioning a neo-isolationist policy, when the real goal should be to understand how those in the rest of the world really see us.I wanted the book to be longer, to provide more detail as to how he got things done, the stuff that worked, and more on what he saw and experienced. As I wrote this review, I found myself listening to the BBC World news trying to connect with the world that Rogers so eloquently describes. This is a great book, and the kind that should be required reading for students of all ages!

Of all the books you read this year, this may be the one you will remember best. As you journey around the world there will be times you may envy Jim Rogers, while at others you may be thankful you were not with him, but always you will have to know what he is going to be doing on the next page. Rogers reveals to you the wonders of places many of us have dreamed of visiting but never will. He does the same for places many have never even known existed. His is not the tourist view, but the genuine article with both the roses and the thorns carefully examined. As in his earlier classic, "Investment Biker," you may even get a few investment ideas, but Rogers never tells you what to do or not do. Rather he clears away the smoke, reveals the true picture, and lets you make your own decisions. Along the way he also gives the careful reader deep insights into who he is and what he believes. There is much depth here for those who can understand, and it adds greatly to the authenticity of the narrative he relates. In the last chapter of the book Rogers examines how Americans see the world and in turn are perceived by other nations. If it would not violate the refreshing spirit of freedom that runs throughout this volume, it would be a good idea to make these final pages required reading in our schools, government offices, and corporate board rooms. I thought I knew a lot about the world. Jim Rogers taught me a lot I did not know. Whenever Rogers writes a book it is always a great privilege to be able to make the journey with him.