My Vast Fortune

June 1, 1997
Tobias relates his financial adventures--and misadventures--from Miami to Moscow, where he bravely took up a campaign to curb smoking in Russia. The book was just bumped up from January to coincide with a PBS special that Tobias is anchoring.

September 15, 1997
Tobias is one of the funniest writers at work today, but he may be underappreciated because readers looking for humor do not usually browse the investment section. This collection focuses on his own financial successes and misadventures. Though substantial, Tobias' fortune is not vast in terms of its size but, rather, in its extent. For example, when doing a real-estate deal over the telephone, Tobias thought he was buying beachfront motels in Miami; in fact, his property turned out to include a drug house on a seedy stretch of Biscayne Boulevard. He has also taken a personal antismoking campaign to Moscow by buying air time on Russian television and battled Ralph Nader over automobile insurance reform in California. Almost all of the material in this book has appeared elsewhere, much of it in recent issues of "Worth" magazine, but some of the articles date back to Tobias' "Getting by on $100,000 a Year, and Other Sad Tales" (1980). In each case, however, Tobias does bring us up to date on his financial escapades, and with his eye for the absurd, each tale is a delight to read. ((Reviewed September 15, 1997))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1997, American Library Association.)