Book Description
Dark Side of Fortune contains all the elements of a Hollywood thriller. Filling in one of the most important gaps in the history of the American West, Margaret Leslie Davis's riveting biography follows Edward L. Doheny's fascinating story from his days as an itinerant prospector in the dangerous jungles of Mexico, where he built the $100-million oil empire that ushered in the new era of petroleum. But it was a tale that ended in tragedy, when--at the peak of his economic power--Doheny was embroiled in the notorious Teapot Dome scandal and charged with bribing the U.S. Secretary of the Interior.
Few captains of industry have matched Doheny's drive to succeed and his far-reaching ambition. Drawn to the West in search of fortune, he failed at prospecting before finding oil in a smelly, tar-befouled lot in Los Angeles in 1892. Certain that the substance had commercial value, he envisioned steamships and locomotives no longer powered by coal, but by oil. After developing massive oil wells in Mexico, Doheny built an international oil empire that made him one of the wealthiest men in the world. But in 1924 the scandal of Teapot Dome engulfed him. As accusations mounted, he hired America's top legal talent for his defense. During the ten-year-long litigation, Doheny's only son was mysteriously murdered by a family confidant. The government's case against Doheny ended in an astounding jury decision: The cabinet official accused of taking a bribe from Doheny was found guilty and sent to prison, yet Doheny was fully acquitted. Despite the verdict, the scandal had overshadowed the achievements of a lifetime, and he died in disgrace in 1935.
Margaret Leslie Davis recreates the legal drama and adds details of behind-the-scenes strategy gleaned from the personal diaries and archives of Doheny's famed defense attorneys. Previously hidden personal correspondence adds to this first complete portrait of the man and answers questions about Doheny that have eluded historians for almost seventy-five years.
Customer Reviews:
Oil Scandal.......2006-08-01
The book was very interesting and historical. The writer was excellent and easy to read and understand.
"Beyond Greed".......2003-10-07
Good read, except for the fact that the author deliberately omitted the fact that Ned Doheny & Hugh Plunkett were gay. Ned Doheny probably was bisexual and he spent a lot of time with his buddy Hugh Plunkett. Certainly the Doheny family asked the author to downplay this issue in exchange for their co-operation with the book. Hugh was more than a "private secretary". I assume the author is straight; so she would not understand Ned's sexuality; Ned was spoiled rotten, an only child, and was given everything money could buy. It is a wonder Hollywood never made a film of this story; perhaps the Doheny family have something to do with this? In 1929, it was assumed that Ned and Hugh were lovers. Ms Davis has tried to change history? For a price? The public is not that stupid. Especially now with the scandals coming out of that seminary in Camarillo for pediphile priests that Estelle Doheny donated so many millions to. It is a wonder the Doheny family did not provide more photos as there are more at the USC library than Ms Davis was able to come up with in this book. The Beverly Hills Historical Society has a better collection of photos of Greystone; fully furnished in its heyday than you see in this book. Behind every great fortune there is a great crime. I expected to read something I had not heard before; but she is afraid to go there. Did Lucy Battson die with her secret? It was scandalous to be gay in those days, but not now. Maybe a gay author could have done the story justice. Her details about the oil fields are great; it is the social history that is lacking. We all know that the greatest export from Ireland is its people.......
Teapot Dome - Early Oil Industry.......2002-08-07
This book is a fascinating look at the life and times of one Edward Doheny the onetime founder of Mexican Oil Company prior to the nationalization of reserves by the revolutionary PRI party in the early days of their power. The narrative follows the career of Mr. Doheny from his modest prospector days in the Wild West to the heights of his infamy during the Teapot Dome scandal.
This is perhaps a timely book as well given the questions being raised at the time of this writing about corporate malfeasance and corruption in the U.S. (Enron). Teapot Dome was one of the biggest political scandals in the first half of the 20th century and involved the leasing of government/public lands in preserve areas for energy development. More than one person went to prison and wrongdoing was proven against multiple individuals in the matter.
The book makes the case that Doheny was more or less guilty of poor judgment and being in the wrong place at the wrong time more or less. It is true of course that Doheny was found innocent on the charges and it is also true that despite this Teapot Dome is the matter for which he is best known (despite for instance being a contemporary and rival of John D. Rockefeller in the oil business). If in fact he was innocent of the charges then he paid a heavy price in terms of his health and the somewhat mysterious death of his son, which was either suicide or murder depending on who you ask and how you look at it.
For those with an interest in the biographies of the early titans of U.S. industry this is a worthy read in that it does detail Mr. Doheny's rise to power as well as his fall from grace. He came from a modest background and did not make his fortune until after the age of 40 in a time before life expectations averaged 70+. He suffered through personal loses and setbacks and managed at the time of his death, despite the misfortunes, to bequeath a sizeable fortune to his heirs. This book may also be of particular interest in the study of Los Angelos in particular and California in general in that the Doheny's were prominent citizens who built some noteworthy structures in the city including religious and educational facilities.
The author acknowledges that she had the cooperation and blessings of the descendants of Mr. Doheny and that a good body of original documentation was available for review and research. This provides an intimate look at the lives of the people in question but it also may cause the thesis to lean towards their views. The book does tend to exonerate Doheny in Teapot Dome and it does make a good argument that his involvement was not profitable and that the Navy Dept in fact sought him out because of rising fears of the Japanese Navy in the years leading up to WWII. It was a condition of Mr. Doheny's development of the area under lease to him that he build an extensive oil storage and supply facility for the Navy in the Hawaiian Isles out of his own pocket. This he did and subsequently was not reimbursed when the lease was negated despite having spent many millions in pre-WWII monies. It is also I believe true to state that it was Henry Sinclair who was the actual lease holder on the Teapot Dome acreage and that Doheny was leased an entirely separate parcel of public land. Sinclair along with Interior Secretary Albert Fall went to prison in the affair but Doheny was also tarred and feathered by the affair.
Whether the delivery of $100,000 in cash by Doheny's son to Sec. Fall was in fact a personal loan much as one might expect between old prospecting buddies (which they were) is really a matter of conjecture. At any rate there was clearly the appearance of impropriety in the matter and both Doheny's son and the man accompanying him that night were involved in a murder/suicide after indictment but before trial. With the principle witness gone and little other corobative evidence Mr. Doheny's celebrity legal representation did get him acquitted although he was convicted in the court of public opinion.
Personally I am inclined to believe a man of his stature might loan a friend the sum in question but I also would not be surprised if a quid pro quo were expected in return. You see there was any number of companies competing in secret for the government contracts and it is interesting that both men who won had either the appearance of impropriety or were outright convicted of bribery. Part of the reason Doheny was spared prison was in fact due to the death of his son and his earnest and teary eyed appearance on the witness stand where he looked the part of a grieving grandfatherly figure who had lost something money could not replace.
It is an intriguing story and well written book, not terribly long or archaic for the casual reader. While it is a history book it is in fact also the story of an interesting chapter in American business and personality history.
Another terrific biography from Margaret Leslie Davis.......2000-03-13
Margaret Leslie Davis has done it again with another fine biography. Ms. Davis shows us the inner man of Edward L. Doheny, one of the richest and greatest Californians in history, virtually the John D. Rockefeller, Sr. of the West. Doheny was flat broke at the ripe age of 40 and yet within a few years he became one of the richest men in the country through his wild-cat oil discoveries in Los Angeles and Mexico. The break-up of Rockefeller's Standard Oil by the U.S. Supreme Court left Doheny an opening which he exploited adroitly. Most impressive is Ms. Davis's keen legal understanding and her scrupulous attention to noting her sources. In fact, the "notes" at the end of the book are arranged so that the top of the page refers the reader to the page number of the text thereby making it very easy to flip back and check the source. A small detail, perhaps, but much appreciated. Ms. Davis is a true scholar; her legal training shows itself especially when discussing the Tea Pot Dome scandal that ultimately tarnished Doheny's reputation. In short, Ms. Davis is becoming our finest historian on the West and particularly California.
Spellbinding Reading for History Lovers.......1998-10-08
Very few biographers could have sifted through the complex and oftentimes mysterious paper trails of Edward Doheny's life to compile such a mesmerizing tale of ambition, scandal, heartbreak, and murder. Margaret Leslie Davis, (winner of the Western Writers of America's Golden Spur Award for Best Nonfiction Book) exceeds her previous biographical effort to regale readers with a shadowy epic tracing the rise, fall, and tragic legacy of an American Icarus who flew too close to the sun.
Buy this book. You'll not be disappointed.
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Screwie's Adventure: Everyone's Hero
Tracey West
Manufacturer: Price Stern Sloan
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Keep on Swinging!: Everyone's Hero
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Everyone's Hero: The Movie Storybook
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Everyone's Hero
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Everyone's Hero
ASIN: 0843121173 |
Book Description
For the baseball buff, a history of the game from street to stadium
This colorful tour of baseball's history, illustrated with folk art and collectibles, shows why the sport is called "America's Pastime". It's truly a game for everyone. From pick-up games played by children, Civil War soldiers, firemen, and college students, to the formation of the first professional leagues, this is a democratic look at the sport illustrated with early baseball cards, paintings, quilts, signs, carved bats, and more. The great players are here, too, depicted by the fans who loved them.
Anyone who has ever collected baseball cards or drawn a picture of a favorite player will appreciate this history of America's homegrown sport, celebrated in American folk art.
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Baseball For Everyone
Joe DiMaggio
Manufacturer: Kessinger Publishing, LLC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
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ASIN: 1432556126 |
Book Description
With A Special Chapter, How To Score, By Red Barber And Line Illustrations By Lenny Hollreiser.
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Baseball for Everyone
Joe DiMaggio
Manufacturer: International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0071413073 |
Book Description
Arguably the greatest all-around player of all time, Joe DiMaggio also wrote (and McGraw-Hill published in 1948) a paean to the game, titled Baseball for Everyone. For aspiring young players and rabid fans alike, Baseball for Everyone explores the finer points of playing each position, lingers on the pitcher's craft, and dwells on the psychology as well as the mechanics of hitting.
With a foreword by famed baseball writer Peter Golenbock new to this paperback edition, Baseball for Everyone remains a wise and revealing look at the mechanics of America's game from one of its greatest practitioners.
Book Description
"Art is thinking in images."—Victor Shklovsky
Undulating water patterns; designs etched directly into exposed film; computer- generated, pulsating, multihued light tapestries—the visual images that often constitute experimental film and video provide the basis for Edward S. Small’s argument for a new theory defining this often overlooked and misunderstood genre. In a radical revision of film theory incorporating a semiotic system, Small contends that experimental film/video constitutes a mode of theory that bypasses written or spoken words to directly connect Ferdinand de Saussure’s "signifier" and "signified," the image and the viewer. This new theory leads Small to develop a case for the establishment of experimental film/video as a major genre.
Small contends that the aesthetic of experimental film/video would best be understood as a coordinate major genre separate from genres such as fictive narrative and documentary. He employs eight experimental technical/structural characteristics to demonstrate this thesis: the autonomy of the artist or a-collaborative construction; economic independence; brevity; an affinity for animation and special effects that embraces video technology and computer graphics; use of the phenomenology of mental imagery, including dreams, reveries, and hallucinations; an avoidance of verbal language as either dialogue or narration; an exploration of nonnarrative structure; and a pronounced reflexivity—drawing the audience’s attention to the art of the film through images rather than through the mediation of words.
Along with a theoretical approach, Small provides an overview of the historical development of experimental film as a genre. He covers seven decades beginning in France and Germany in the 1920s with European avant-garde and underground films and ends with a discussion of experimental videos of the 1990s. He highlights certain films and provides a sampling of frames from them to demonstrate the heightened reflexivity when images rather than words are the transmitters: for example, Ralph Steiner’s 1929 H2O
, a twelve-minute, wordless, realistic study of water patterns, and Bruce Conner’s 1958 A Movie, which unites his themes of war-weapons-death and sexuality not by narrative digesis but by intellectual montage juxtapositions. Small also examines experimental video productions such as Stephen Beck’s 1977 Video Weavings, which has a simple musical score and abstract images recalling American Indian rugs and tapestries.
Small adds classic and contemporary film theory discussions to this historical survey to further develop his direct-theory argument and his presentation of experimental film/video as a separate major genre. He stresses that the function of experimental film/video is "neither to entertain nor persuade but rather to examine the quite omnipresent yet little understood pictos [semiotic symbols] that mark and measure our postmodern milieu."
Customer Reviews:
groundbreaking consideration of experimental films as theory.......1999-10-22
Groundbreaking book which views avant-garde/experimental films (like those of Brakhage) as works of film theory.
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- Riveting and well researched
- The book is an opportunity lost
- Adventurous couple
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The Enchanted Quest of Dana And Ginger Lamb
Julie Huffman-Klinkowitz , and
Jerome Klinkowitz
Manufacturer: University Press of Mississippi
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Binding: Hardcover
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Enchanted Vagabonds
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Quest for the Lost City
ASIN: 1578067960 |
Book Description
Best-selling authors, sensational lecturers, documentary filmmakers, amateur archaeologists, spies for F.D.R.—Dana and Ginger Lamb led the life of Indiana Jones long before the movie icon was ever scripted. "We blaze the trail," Ginger said, "and the scientists follow." For decades, boys and girls dreamed of growing up to become "explorers" like the Lambs.
The Enchanted Quest of Dana and Ginger Lamb is the first biography of this captivating, entrepreneurial couple. In Southern California, they started married life in 1933 by building a canoe. With only $4.10 in their pockets, they paddled to Central America and through the Panama Canal. Three years later they returned triumphant, bearing the photographic record of the amazing trek that made them famous.
After releasing their bestselling book, Enchanted Vagabonds (still in print), the two became exactly that. They relentlessly lectured for the public and postured for the media until they were able to fund more exotic voyages to remote jungles and rivers. So convincing were they on the circuit that their most powerful fan, President Franklin Roosevelt, coerced J. Edgar Hoover into hiring the Lambs as spies in Mexico. After World War II they launched their Quest for the Lost City, which yielded another book and documentary. Other escapades, no less thrilling and marketable, filled the remainder of their astonishing lives.
The Enchanted Quest of Dana and Ginger Lamb argues that the Lambs were geniuses of popular entertainment and the precursors to Animal Planet, the Travel Channel, and numerous documentary-format television shows. Drawing on historical records, the Lambs' books and letters, and recently declassified espionage documents, biographers Julie Huffman-klinkowitz and Jerome Klinkowitz show how the Lambs succeeded in marketing their conquests and films to armchair explorers around the world and how they became, in popular imagination, the quintessential American adventurers.
Customer Reviews:
Riveting and well researched.......2006-12-21
Based on the foregoing reviews, I almost did not order the book. However, I knew that if there was more to be learned about the Lambs, I had to get it. Although I was fully prepared to hate the book, this did not happen. I had read both Enchanted Vagabonds and Quest for the Lost City in my earliest days of reading about the Maya and it was in the latter where I first read about the fascinating, but ill-starred Carlos Frey.
I don't normally read introductions to books, but I read this one and the preface as well. As I progressed and had to pause to do other things from time to time, I kept coming back to to it, whenever I could and I began it yesterday and finished it today. It was especially intriguing how the authors kept finding instances of duplicity in the accounts by the Lambs, but managed to end the book still obviously liking them.
Contrary to what was implied in a previous post, referring to newspaper accounts was not a rote effort. Instead it provided some contrast to what later appeared in the books. News accounts during the period of the first one showed them being towed across the sea from Baja to the mainland, but in the actual book, they suffered and were in great danger while paddling across.
In crossing the Gulf of Tehuantepec, the first book also does not mirror the news accounts, which told of them using a motor. Although the authors here gave no credence, because the vessel, the Vagabunda was a canoe, such a craft can be modified by people to use a motor. One can also place it on the side of a canoe, especially if one uses a paddle as rudder to compensate.
Newspaper accounts and other evidence show that Quest for the Lost City was interrupted by no less than eight returns to the US, but far fewer make their way into the book itself.
One of the delays involved them getting hired to be spies in Northern Mexico in early WWII, based on Dana's recollections of possible evidence. Based in Baja, they got great salaries and expenses until the FBI realized it was being duped and Hoover fired them. Then began the Lambs' slow last report, the turning in of which would stop the money flow. Oddly enough, they were on good terms with FDR, who was a fan, which was apparently the cause of the actual delay in getting rid of them.
In the past, I was in contact with a fellow who had been researching the Lambs for a book, but he had become dismayed with them. Not having an innate appreciation of grand showmanship and chutzpa, such as these authors do, he just stopped the effort.
I don't agree with all the authors wrote. I don't think that Yaxchilán was entirely the origin of the photos the Lambs used in the Quest book to show the "Lost City". They also fail to show that the Lambs' photographed stela had been there at some point, before it went missing. Apparently it was unique.
I wish I had known of this when it was just an intended book. I could have sent them copies of a couple letters back home from Carlos Frey, calling the Lambs phony and telling how they set up scenes to make themselves look brave. As it was, the authors apparently did hear about the Frans Blom diatribe against them that I had run across in the Na Bolom library.
However, this is a fascinating read about two huckster adventurers and it tells far more than one would guess from a cynical reading of their books. I think that the real story of Dana and Ginger Lamb would make a great movie as well.
The book is an opportunity lost.......2006-03-20
Dana and Ginger Lamb were adventurers, Julie Huffman-Klinkowitz and Jerome Klinkowits are academics. Like blind people describing an elephant ,the authors told us about it's foot. An elephant is more than a foot. The Enchanted Quest of Dana And Ginger Lamb was researched in libraries. There is no indications that the authors ever so much as visited Mexico on a Club Med Tour. The book is an opportunity lost. For those who are hungry for Lamb information the book has value. If one has not read the Lamb books, there is no reason to read
Adventurous couple.......2006-03-16
I am, for the most part, an armchair adventurer. Ever since a friend gave me a copy of Byron Farwell's epic biography of the famed 19th century traveler, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, many years ago, I have been a huge fan of exploration and adventure literature. I've planned half a dozen trips either following in Burtons footsteps or blazing paths I thought anew. None have ever come to fruition, though I have been on many smaller adventures since.
Recently I the vague idea that I wanted a new read, but I didn't quite know what. I ventured into my local bookstore and headed back to the history and biography section, as I usually do. Browsing there, my eyes lit upon a slim volume with a distinctively "pulp fiction" jacket. "The Enchanted Quest of Dana and Ginger Lamb," read the title. The cover art depicted a muscular, almost Frank Frezetta-style, couple hacking their way, half-dressed through a jungle with machetes. Well, I love that kind of kitsch, so I picked it up out of curiosity, leafed through it for a moment and took it to the check-out counter.
Turns out that Dana and Ginger Lamb were Orange County natives. Married in the early 1930s - he in his mid thirties, she eleven years younger - they lit out for an adventurous honeymoon. They built a boat; a sort of half canoe, half sailboat rig, from scratch, and sailed and paddled it to Panama. It took three years. Along the way, they searched for buried treasure, lived on a desert isle, dallied with pirates and were accused more than once of being gringo spies. Eventually, they took their tiny boat through the Panama Canal itself - the smallest craft to date - and returned to the U.S. via steamer. High adventure indeed.
Being media savvy, the Lambs kept the hometown papers in Santa Ana and Orange County - and eventually the L.A. and New York papers - apprised of their adventures. By the time they returned they had become celebrities. Their book, Enchanted Vagabonds, written with a lot of help from a literary friend, became a best seller. Capitalizing on their succes, the pair went on the lecture, documentary and slideshow circuit, making a name for themselves, coast-to-coast, as family adventurers, teaching basic survival skills to the Ward and June Cleavers of America.
They went on to have more adventures: spying (for real this time) in Mexico on German suspects during World War II, searching for a lost city in the jungle between Mexico and Guatemala, hunting through Baja for a hidden mission. They never found anything they were ostensibly looking for. But that wasn't the point. They were looking for themselves, and for a way of life - and a living - that was theirs alone. That they found in abundance.
It's a great story and a pretty darn good book. If I have a complaint it's that the authors, Julie Huffman-Klinkowitz and Jerome Klinkowitz tend to repeat themselves; by the time you've read the preface and introduction, you feel like you've already got the whole story. Also, not that much is known about this intriguing couple from a personal perspective and it shows in the writing. The Klinkowitzes rely heavily on old newspaper clippings; we don't feel we really know the subjects in any intimate way. But perhaps that's to be expected in writing about the Lambs, a public couple who gauged themselves by their reflections in the media's eye.
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Master Sudoku: Puzzles of Varying Difficulty, Volume 1
Marc Colello
Manufacturer: Lulu.com
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Sudoku
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ASIN: 1411643151 |
Book Description
Master Sudoku guides you through varying levels of Sudoku difficulty, from Tyro through Master. Containing over 149 puzzles, Master Sudoku will satisfy your urge to sharpen your mind. So empty your schedule, sit back, and prepare to be puzzled.
Book Description
An Owner's Manual provides fast, practical and direct advice and that's what you get with this book! The Small Business Owner's Manual is useful for newly minted entrepreneurs as well as seasoned business owners and can be read from cover-to-cover or to quickly lookup information in the midst of a crisis.
For example:
* Choose among 13 ways to get new financing and the 17 steps to building a winning loan package.
* Weigh the pros and cons among 8 legal structures, from corporations to LLCs.
* Write winning ads and analyze 16 advertising and marketing alternatives including the latest in Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.
* Develop a powerful business plan in half the time.
* Learn to sell products and services by considering 10 possible sales and distribution channels.
* Discover the latest trends to quickly and inexpensively set up a web-site and e-store.
* Get taxes paid on time, collect from deadbeats, protect the business from litigation and get legal agreements with teeth by effectively finding and partnering with CPAs and attorneys.
* Get a quick overview of the 14 top forms of business insurance including workers comp and medical.
* Looking to lease? Exploit a comprehensive review of the top 18 critical factors used to evaluate locations and 24 of the most important clauses in lease agreements.
* Understand the legal side of hiring, firing, and managing employees and contractors.
* Minimize taxes by learning the ins-and-outs of business income taxes, the top 5 payroll taxes, sales and use taxes, common tax dodges, and the latest loopholes for business owners. Filing schedules, form names, form numbers and download links are also included.
* Credit cards are critical these days - so learn how the system really works and minimize chargebacks, disputes and headaches. Includes 35 important definitions and 12 ways to minimize fraud.
* Lots more too!
Customer Reviews:
Don't Buy it!.......2007-06-09
I was extremely disappointed with this book. This book is full of Mr. Kennedy's and his buddies adventures in business but has very little for a person starting up a business. Don't waste your money on this book. I found better information on the internet.
Invaluable advice for the entrepreneur.......2007-05-16
This is an excellent book that gives practical, invaluable and enlightening advice to entrepreneurs. It covers a wide range of relevant topics including such areas as the start-up process, marketing the business on a small budget, cash-flow forecasting, resource gathering, business plans, legal entities, financing, e-commerce/e-business and insurance and it does so in a simple and remarkably engaging manner.
Joe Kennedy's life as a `successful entrepreneur is fascinating and inspiring, and his first class education coupled with his wealth of entrepreneurial success, give his advice and insights the maximum credibility. He reinforces his message with interesting, witty and enlightening stories. The book is an invaluable resource to any person who is either currently involved or thinking about getting involved in any type of new venture.
The book is an excellent companion that contains a wealth of useful and helpful information and ideas on starting a small business and ensuring that it is viable and successful that is well worth having.
Solid Entrepreneurial Manual.......2005-09-11
When I signed up with an Internet company they sent me a copy of this book
as some kind of promotion but it's well worth the full retail price.
Sometimes "sign up" gifts turn out to be not so good but I do get a lot of
mileage out of Kennedy's new book. Many entrepreneurs (like me!) are very
good in one particular area, say e-commerce, but are not so aware of the
many other facets of running a business - and that's why this book is great.
I am an Internet kind of guy but "The Small Business Owner's Manual" or
"TSBOM" as they call it has a lot of relevant info on building and promoting
web sites and e-stores, however there are also has several chapters of very
solid material in the other dimensions of running a business - like forming
the entity and "hiring and firing" and minimizing taxes and my favorite part
is when the book explains a businesses' "unique selling proposition."
I keep it on the shelf just behind my desk and whenever something comes up
this is often the first place I look. Even though I am happy to jump to the
Internet, this book is better and faster than most searches, since it's
focused on small business owners and not on selling something and it is
solid information and not a lot of obvious things you already knew.
PS The book also has an Internet site, [...], where you can ask the author questions - which he does answer - and there are free downloads of most commonly used business documents and agreements.
It's nice to get a coffee cup as a promotional gift but this book is about
operating a serious business. If Kennedy ever writes a new version I'll buy
it.
EXCELLENT REFERENCE BOOK.......2005-07-15
The Small Business Owners Manual is a practical addition to any office. I didn't have to read the whole book and map it out to make it useful. Using the Contents page and the bold face paragraph titles, I can go quickly to the subject of interest and get crisp, meaningful information. It's the best I've seen - not bulked up with wasted words. You can order it with a few keystrokes and put it to use within minutes after receiving it.
Great How-to Book for Guys Like Me.......2005-07-01
I operate a media-related business and let's just say I like dealing with
people more than some of the nitty-gritty details of running a business.
Since my business is growing I needed advice in many different areas like
hiring employees or contractors, getting my accounting finished, finding an
attorney/partner and all of the different taxes that must be reported and
paid. Believe me all of this can be a headache to those who just want to
concentrate on a business they are passionate about, so I like this book
because it gets down to details without going through a lot of obvious or
useless information. The author (Joe Kennedy) also provides a lot of
comments on how these things really manifest in the real-world. For example
he explains about how some taxes should be reported and paid exactly on time
to avoid problems, but he gives examples of others where business owners can
fudge a little. This alone can pay for the book many times over.
I also like how the information is organized. Everything is explained in
macro terms as each section begins, but then heavy-duty details follow. So
you can open up to just about any section (for example payroll taxes or
medical savings accounts) and get right into it. Finally get ready because
the book is thick with information but the writing style makes it easy to
follow. I recommend reading one chapter per day over two weeks and this
will allow time to think about all of the new information overnight.
The only problem I saw with the book is that the chapters on Hiring/Firing
and Taxes were maybe a bit too long but who can complain for getting too
much information? This is not one of those "feel-good" cheerleader type
business books, but instead offers lots and lots of practical information
that you will need every day.
The web site [...] is also useful especially
as they add more and more documents to the document downloads section.
Readers get free access to the goodies on this site.
Jeff Heckler, The Solutions Group
Books:
- Diana, Corazon Roto/ Diana, Broken Hearted
- Diana: Retrato de Una Princesa
- Diana: The Lonely Princess
- El Asesinato de Tutankamon: La Verdadera Historia (Coleccion Documento)
- Empire: A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon
- Falling Angels: A Novel
- Faraday as a Discoverer (Large Print Edition)
- Father, Son & Co.: My Life at IBM and Beyond
- Fire Into Ice: Charles Fipke & the Great Diamond Hunt
- Footnotes : What You Stand For Is More Important Than What You Stand In
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Tesla: Man Out of Time
- The Clay Pot Cookbook
- The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor's Disappearance: A Novel
- Shrapnel in the Heart: Letters and Remembrance from the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial
- Star Wars Complete Cross-Sections: The Spacecraft and Vehicles of the Entire Star Wars Saga
- Paleoseismology, Volume 62
- Soil and Aquifer Pollution: Non-Aqueous Phase Liquids - Contamination and Reclamation
- Something's Not Right: One Family's Struggle with Learning Disabilities
- Recreating Asia: Visions for a New Century
- Seaweeds of Singapore
Among the Mansions of Eden: Tales of Love, Lust, and Land in Beverly Hills
Rivers in the Desert
The Culture Broker: Franklin D. Murphy and the Transformation of Los Angeles
Rivers in the Desert: William Mulholland and the Inventing of Los Angeles
William Mulholland and the Rise of Los Angeles
