(MONEY Magazine) – Okay. I know most of you will be spending the summer curled up in the hammock or stretched out on the sand with Grisham's or King's or Steele's latest bestseller. Frankly, I don't blame you. But how about splicing in some summer reading that could actually help you make more money? With that goal in mind, here are thumbnail reviews of five of my favorite financial tomes. All were released within the past four years, although the final selection is a re-issue of a golden oldie originally published four decades ago.

--Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (John Wiley & Sons, $27.95). In this fascinating treatise on man's attempt to deal with risk in investing as well as in other aspects of life, economics consultant and Journal of Portfolio Management founding editor Peter L. Bernstein covers a huge sweep of history. Bernstein explains, for example, how Italian Renaissance scientists in the 1500s first calculated the odds on rolling dice--and then he moves century by century right up to the brain-twisting math of modern portfolio theory. At first glance, such esoteric material might seem a bit tangential for fund investors. But Bernstein imparts many practical insights. He details, for example, why even by examining long-term track records it's difficult to distinguish a lucky fund manager from a skillful one, and he drives home the importance of spreading your investing bets to maximize "the probability of survival." Though the book cries out for a chapter on how to evaluate your own tolerance for risk, this challenging volume will help you understand the uncertainties every investor must face.

--Bogle on Mutual Funds (McGraw-Hill, $25). Written by former Vanguard chairman and low-fee zealot John C. Bogle, this book is one of the most sophisticated guides to fund investing you're likely to find. His chapter "How to Select a Common Stock Mutual Fund" rounds up a flock of complex concepts--including beta, portfolio turnover, correlation coefficients and the predictability of returns--in 30 surprisingly readable pages. Yes, this volume is self-serving. (After all, the more you are swayed by Bogle's sermons about the advantages of low costs, the more likely you will be to invest in Vanguard funds.) But it's also brimming with the kind of blunt and honest tips ("if it is called a 'hot new product,' do not invest in it") that will make you a wiser--and probably richer--investor.

--A Zebra in Lion Country (Simon & Schuster, $25). Ralph Wanger is arguably one of America's best fund managers--his Acorn Fund has beaten 99% of all small-stock funds over the past 15 years--and he's indisputably the funniest (trust me; the typical stock jockey couldn't get you to crack a smile if you'd been sniffing laughing gas all day). Explaining why it pays to pick stocks by anticipating major social trends, Wanger recalls: "Air conditioners created the New South. In 1930 the population of Houston was six men and a dog, and the dog was dead." This book contains more advice for picking stocks than funds--"Investing in businesses that will benefit from new technology rather than investing in the technology companies themselves has often proved the smarter strategy"--but it's always entertaining.

--Investment Policy (McGraw-Hill, $35). Even if you've never taken an Evelyn Wood speed-reading class, you can devour this 92-page opus in one sitting. Charles D. Ellis, a top dog at the leading Wall Street consulting firm Greenwich Associates, hammers home a vital truth: "Clients--not their portfolio managers--have the most important job in successful investment management." He points out that investors have "undelegatable responsibilities," including "setting explicit investment policies consistent with their objectives...and managing their managers to ensure that their policies are being followed." Ellis' crystal-clear discussions of the importance of investing for the long term will make you a wiser partner with the fund managers you choose.

--How to Lie with Statistics (Norton, $7.95). First published in 1954, Darrell Huff's 142-page classic is a breezy and timeless guide to the ways the powers that be--like, say, fund companies--play tricks on you with numbers. Just the 21-page chapter "How to Talk Back to a Statistic"--which was written to help you "recognize sound and usable data in that wilderness of fraud"--could save you a small fortune. The next time you see a chart showing how $10,000 invested in a mutual fund years ago has grown to a $200,000 mountain today, remember Huff's warning about "the nonsense inherent" in extrapolating past experience into the future. The number of television sets in American homes, writes Huff, "increased around 10,000% from 1947 to 1952. Project this for the next five years, and you find that there'll soon be a couple billion of the things, heaven forbid, or 40 sets per family." Substitute computers or Web browsers for TVs in that sentence, and you will also understand why so many tech stocks sell at ludicrously inflated prices these days.

Now, back to The Runaway Jury.