The Intelligent Investor is still worth reading 75 years later

When investor Warren Buffett calls a book on investing "by far the best book about investing ever written", it is common sense to concede the point.

- Gary Sernovitz

NEW ORLEANS - When investor Warren Buffett calls a book on investing "by far the best book about investing ever written," it is common sense to concede the point. One does this while gently pointing out that The Intelligent Investor by Professor Benjamin Graham, with a third edition for its 75th anniversary (HarperCollins, Oct 22), contains a lot of musty musings on railroad shares and the markets of 1972, requires (and gets) contemporary commentary by the Wall Street Journal's Jason Zweig after each of its original chapters, and provides investment advice that would have led over the last 30 years to lousy returns. This is why the book is likely more owned than read.

But it should be read for its core, originating importance: an inoculation against bad habits of mind. Graham (born Grossbaum) was an active investor at his own firm in the 1920s through the 1950s. An undergrad polymath at Columbia University (English, maths, philosophy, music, Latin and Greek), he seemed inclined always to also teach, maybe a legacy of being the great-grandson of an unsurpassably named famous Warsaw rabbi Yaakov Gesundheit.

Mr. Buffett took classes from Graham at Columbia Business School and later worked for him for two years, 70 years ago. The Intelligent Investor was Graham's second book, a popularizing follow-up to his and Professor David Dodd's more technical Security Analysis.

After the 1949 original, The Intelligent Investor was reissued three more times in Graham's lifetime, with sedimentary layers of financial lessons from the first three quarters of the 20th century. He was 79 at the publication of his last edition, which can meander and repeat. And so for this edition, Mr. Zweig provides footnotes and follow-on commentary, sometimes nearly as long as the original chapter: postscripts to Graham's advice, wisdom from other market sages, references to GameStop or SPACs, and his own morally urgent advice.