With nerves of steel and a cool head, mutual-fund manager Mark Mobius travels the globe in search of good, undiscovered companies in risky, emerging markets. In Passport to Profits, he takes you on a enlightening international tour, from Estonia to Russia to Nigeria. He shows you how he's established a winning long-term record at Franklin Templeton funds, up an average 20 percent a year between 1987 and 1997. "I'd toured rubber plantations in Thailand and road-tested bikes over the pothole-ridden roads of rural China. I'd choked on roasted camel's meat, sheep's eyeball, guinea pig and dined (surprisingly well) on scorpions on toast," Mobius writes, "all to find undervalued companies before other investors do. I think you could safely say that I'm driven."Like his mentor, the famed Sir John Templeton, Mobius believes in buying stock at the peak of pessimism and believes that the economic turmoil overseas in the late 1990s may signal an opportunity. The author lays out more than 80 rules for investing in developing nations and provides plenty of examples of how he picked winners like Shanghai Dazhong Taxi Co., Ltd. and was burned by Cukurova, a Turkish utility, and other losers. Passport to Profits is a valuable and easy-to-read tour for investors interested in the world's up-and-coming economies.--Dan Ring