Beating the Odds

Book excerpt: Beating the Odds is the improbable, inspiring autobiography of financial guru Eddie C. Brown, one of the nation's top stock pickers and money managers. It details how Brown skillfully kept Brown Capital Management afloat through the dot-com bust, 9/11 and the Great Recession. Born to a 13-year-old unwed mother in the rural South, this African-American investment whiz created a Baltimore-based financial firm that amassed more than $6 Billion under management. Brown delves into the profound heartbreak and disorientation upon the death of his beloved grandmother – who was his surrogate mother -- and recounts how Brown's moonshine-running Uncle Jake subsequently became the dominant adult figure in Brown's life. His unflinchingly honest, easy-to-read memoir details how intellectual curiosity, abiding self-belief, hard work and divine providence helped Brown earn an electrical engineering degree, become an Army officer, and later a civilian IBM engineer. Readers will learn of the strife that ensued when Brown quit IBM to earn an MBA, leading to investment jobs that prepared him to start his own money management company in 1983.