There is simply no book which can cover both the micro and the macro aspects of each alternative investment class, however, in the modern world of alternative investments there is little excuse for professional investors not to appreciate how the ideas presented in these books may lead to a series of widely held misconceptions. These include 1) the assumed diversification benefits of all hedge fund strategies (when in fact some have low correlations with stock and bond funds while others have high correlations), 2) the often used comparison of hedge funds with T-bill as a measure of manager alpha when in fact all mangers performance should be compared to a passive investment of similar trading and risk profile, and 3) all commodity products provide similar benefits when in fact gold is more of a currency asset than a traditional industrial commodity. More importantly, the return and risk characteristics of most of the alternative investment classes have changed overtime. In this...