Paul Zane Pilzer is on to something. His Wellness Revolution is the health industry in the broadest sense from drug makers to food packagers and producers to health insurance companies He says that the whole shebang will be the next big thing for the stock market and that people should get with the movement for their own health, their wealth, and their sense of doing good things for others. But much of his message gets lost in a cloud of health evangelism.

The dust jacket informs us that Mr. Pilzer is a lay rabbi, Wharton graduate at the tender age of 22, multimillionaire, economic advisor to presidents and talking head on CNN and National Public Radio in the U.S. In The Wellness Revolution, he strays from straight economics into medicine and religion. He damns the dairy industry for causing widespread illness and praises religion as "the highest motivating force in the world."

Let's get real on this. Dairy farmers, subsidized up to their cows' udders, also provide nutrition. As for religion, O.K., it certainly inspires believers. But how about the crusades and the Inquisition? A lot of souls have been slain in the name of the Lord.

Let's consider the economics of the wellness revolution. Mr. Pilzer says there's a lot of money to be made in keeping people healthy, which is undoubtedly true. But then come his economic theories. "We are entering the era of effectively zero marginal production and physical distribution costs," he writes. This is fanciful and it is wrong. Even tinkering with sales on the internet has some opportunity costs in that those who peddle health products on the Web aren't doing something else that could be more productive or profitable. Still, he says that high deductible health policies will be the coming thing. With a big deductible, it costs less. Savings on health insurance can be invested in something like health products. There should be investment opportunities, Mr. Pilzer says, in cooking (wellness restaurants), hairdressing (wellness products for the scalp), and using religious affiliation for marketing (so much for lofty motivation).

His conclusion; "There is no better example of God's hand at work than in the emerging wellness industry and in the positive economic forces behind the wellness revolution that is about to take place."

So can you make money with this book? Yes, if you use it as inspiration to go out and buy stocks in the health biz. But you don't need the whole book to do that. Just keep in mind that healthy foods, exercise and so forth should be marketable for a long time. Mr. Pilzer gives no metrics for comparing individual health investments, but they remain the traditional ones - discounted cash flow, quality and certainty of income, low risk balance sheets, and so forth. However, for the reader who wants to get his investment inspiration delivered at the level of health industry subscectors, this book is potentially useful.