Though 2005 is scarcely a third over, it's not too early to entertain a nomination for investment book of the year.

My candidate is "The Daily Drucker," a compendium of wisdom from the writings of Peter Drucker, the famed management guru who turns 96 this year.

"Futurists always measure their batting average by counting how many things they have predicted that have come true. They never count how many important things come true that they did not predict."

Instead of playing a guess-the-future game, better to look for and try to understand changes that have already begun to take place -- the "future that has already happened."

Drucker doesn't argue so much for optimism as for realism. "Face reality," he says. "Today's new realities fit neither the assumptions of the Left nor those of the Right."