INVESTMENT GUIDE David Ingram. Surrey (BC), Hancock House, c1982. 204pp, paper, $12.95. ISBN 0-88839-111-0. Post-Secondary. Reviewed by Allan Kogon. Volume 11 Number 3. 1983 May. Writing a Canadian investment guide seems to be one of the best ways to ensure a tidy annual income. The ink is barely dry when the Canadian finance minister will announce changes in taxing legislation necessitating a new edition. This book is the most recent revision (the eleventh) of a popular investment series written by Ingram who calls himself a financial consultant and revised by Betty Scott. However, a new finance minister and recent mini budgets have already ensured the need for the next edition (scheduled for February, 1983). The book is printed double spaced like a typewriter manuscript in a soft-covered 8½ x 11 inch format. Presumably, this makes for faster revision and publication of the new editions while keeping costs to a minimum. The author's investment policy is summarized by recommending investment in durable goods, the most classic of which is real estate. In this way he feels one inflation proofs one's investment. The particular emphasis is for rental properties, and the book has numerous examples from British Columbia. One difficulty is that each province has various regulations controlling rental properties such as landlord-and-tenant law and rent-control legislation, which an Ontario investor, for example, must deal with in assessing the viability of an investment. Most interest-earning investments and more heretically, most tax shelters are not recommended, including the very popular RRSP. This book brings to the fore certain investment ideas that are not usually emphasized in most investment guides and yet are relevant considerations when investing in today's economy. I like the fact that this book makes no pretense of making the reader an expert stock analyst in one chapter. Rather, it discusses investments in more general terms. It would have been improved, however, if there had been less repetition of the same ideas without adding any new insight to the concept. By making people more sensitive to the fact that they must optimize their after tax and after inflation yield, this book fills the useful purpose and should provide good insight on investment analysis. Allan Kogon, Georgetown, ON.