A Finance Approach to Accounting for Lawyers (University Casebook Series)

Book Description

A Finance Approach to Accounting for Lawyers lays the foundation for understanding business in ways that will be useful in a law practice. It's a modern casebook for the traditional Accounting for Lawyers course.

The text teaches financial accounting from the point of view of reading and using financial statements. The accounting discussion is organized in two parts. The first introduces the basic financial statements, and accrual and deferral. The second part deals with more advanced topics: intangibles, services, contingencies, consolidations, and acquisitions. One volume.

A Finance Approach to Accounting for Lawyers (University Casebook series, Teacher's Manual)

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A Finance Approach to Accounting for Lawyers (University Casebook series, Teacher's Manual)

Manufacturer: Foundation Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1566627788

Product Description

Teacher's manual to accompany a 3 volume set A Finance Approach to Accounting for Lawyers

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Again--Nothing New

Adding Humor to the Workplace

Search for the Golden Nuggets in This Book

Attitude Is Everything !

A Definite Must Own!

Managing Workplace Negativity
Gary S. Topchik
Manufacturer: AMACOM/American Management Association
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Workplace | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0814405827

Book Description

The symptoms: increased customer complaints, high turnover, low quality of work, increased absences, loss of morale and motivation, lack of creativity and innovation, loss of loyalty to the organization. The diagnosis: workplace negativity. The cure: MANAGING WORKPLACE NEGATIVITY.

Workplace negativity may seem like an intangible problem--but it has very tangible consequences for the companies it afflicts. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that U.S. companies lose $3 billion a year to the effects of negative attitudes and behaviors at work.

MANAGING WORKPLACE NEGATIVITY gives managers, team leaders, trainers, and other human resources professionals much-needed help in treating the negativity bug. It will help readers:

* Identify the 14 types of negative individuals, from the "not-my-jobber" to the "rumor monger" * Confront their own negativity * Recognize negativity "trigger points" * Overcome entrenched, ongoing negativity * Deal with group or company-wide negativity problems * Create a positive environment that enhances morale and productivity.

Customer Reviews:

Again--Nothing New.......2007-01-16

Wondered why I bought the book. It really didn't say much of anything that all the other managment books say. Just had a promising title.

Adding Humor to the Workplace.......2007-01-09

As this book suggests, one of the best ways to combat workplace negativity is to add some positive humor.
One book that can help you find on-the-job humor is WorkLaughs: Quips, Quotes, and
Anecdotes about Making a Buck. Like Managing Workplace Negativity it too can be found on Amazon.

Search for the Golden Nuggets in This Book.......2006-09-13

Mr. Topchik has written an easy to read book on negativity. While I felt some of the information is overly simplistic, such as the "Cast of Negativists", there were other examples that were useful such as Chapter 4, "Dealing with Pervasive Individual & Team Negativity".

The trust and enablement matrix was also interesting, and the last chapters of the book are worth reading for managers and supervisors who need to be aware of issues around organizational negativity.

The book is worth reading for some of the less obvious nuggets offered up.

Attitude Is Everything !.......2006-04-01

If you have a morale issue in your workplace, chances are someone is spreading negativity around. One negative person can sour a whole team, so don't ignore it.
This book defines workplace negativity and investigates the causes for it. It tells you what symptoms to watch for and gives thirty quick fixes. It also advises how to overcome individual and team negativity. I was pleased to see the chapter on changing organizational norms, because the structure may set up repeat episodes of negativity with new staff.

A Definite Must Own!.......2004-06-18

Gary Topchik discusses concrete issues and resolutions. There are no ambiguous situations. He makes you think for yourself and helps you develop your problem solving skills. He thinks "out of the box" and leads you to do the same. You begin to realize that some situations which you believed benign, are really negative. It is a definite must own!

Amazon.com

Who would have thought a mathematical constant would make such an engaging character? God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe, mathematician Amir Aczel's tale of the search for a scientific explanation of the universe, features the cosmological constant in a role as complex as Einstein's. The great genius referred to it as his "greatest blunder," but recent events in the world of astrophysics have brought the prodigal term back into the fold as an important part of his field equation. Aczel is a powerful storyteller, and makes no secret of his admiration for Einstein; much of the book revolves around his conquest of general relativity. Integrating relativity with gravitation was no easy task (even for Einstein), but the author deftly steers the reader away from the sticky stuff and focuses attention on concepts of importance.

Aczel shows Einstein's aesthetic troubles with the cosmological constant, which preceded theoretical and experimental problems leading to its abandonment. The universe was caught in the act of expansion by Edwin Hubble, and the constant, originally invoked to maintain a steady-state universe, was unnecessary. Fortunately, though, the mathematics underlying the constant had become important tools for physicists; observations in 1997 and 1998 by Saul Perlmutter, Neta Bahcall, and others showed that the universe will continue expanding indefinitely and sent theorists back to the drawing board to revise their equations. The cosmological constant returned triumphant, and while its inventor might never have approved of it, today's scientific community gives it an honored role in God's Equation. --Rob Lightner

Book Description

Are we on the verge of solving the riddle of creation using Einstein's "greatest blunder"?

In a work that is at once lucid, exhilarating and profound, renowned mathematician Dr. Amir Aczel, critically acclaimed author of Fermat's Last Theorem, takes us into the heart of science's greatest mystery.

In January 1998, astronomers found evidence that the cosmos is expanding at an ever-increasing rate. The way we perceive the universe was changed forever. The most compelling theory cosmologists could find to explain this phenomenon was Einstein's cosmological constant, a theory he conceived--and rejected---over eighty years ago.

Drawing on newly discovered letters of Einstein--many translated here for the first time--years of research, and interviews with prominent mathematicians, cosmologists, physicists, and astronomers, Aczel takes us on a fascinating journey into "the strange geometry of space-time," and into the mind of a genius. Here the unthinkable becomes real: an infinite, ever-expanding, ever-accelerating universe whose only absolute is the speed of light.

Awesome in scope, thrilling in detail, God's Equation is storytelling at its finest.

Customer Reviews:

Good Primer, but..........2006-02-17

A good introduction to a thoroughly arcane subject: The Theory of Relativity. But Aczel dwells far too long on Arthur Eddington and his journey to photograph an eclipse in an effort to prove or disprove Einstein's idea. The book could almost be retitled "Al and Art Tiptoe Through the Cosmos." The private respective lives of both Einstein and Eddington are not central to the topic and the search, which Einstein explains as, "...wanting to know God's thoughts." The book does present Einstein--justly or unjustly--as someone I wouldn't want to cross.

Great intro.......2005-07-30

God's equation is a great intro into Einstein's theory of relativity. However the book is exactly that just an easy intro avoiding anything too perplexing and of course excluding any explanation of the equations. A good book for those who want to know about the theory and what its general idea is, but not really understand how einstein came to all of his conclusions.

a most basic primer.......2005-03-28

I am beginning to think that it is possible I have just outgrown these types of science-lite books. While occasionally the review of some of the equations involved was a nice refresher I got virtually nothing new out of this book.

After reading the enjoyable but far overreaching The Mystery of the Aleph I didn't have the highest of expectations from Aczel but I must say I still felt let down. Narrative style survey histories of the sciences are what Aczel does best but when he attempts to go beyond that his limits quickly become apparent. When one pumps out a book every year as Aczel does it is not surprising that the books will not be especially noteworthy - as these are not.

Possibly the strangest part of this book though is how one is left with the distinct impression that Aczel is kissing up to Einstein... who is dead. I have read books before by people who were admittedly great admirers of Einstein (most notably Janna Levin) but never before have I been struck by this -to the point where one has to question his objectivity in evaluating rival points of view.

If you know little or nothing of these subjects then no doubt you will find much of this book both enjoyable and informative - if you are looking for anything more than a basic primers this book has nothing to offer you.

A breath of fresh air........2004-12-31

If you are a person of faith, it is difficult to not dislike scientists who explore origins, because of their dogged secularism. However Amir Aczel in this book manages to explain to the reader an important new developent in our understanding of the universe (the fact that it has been proved to be expanding at an accelerating rate) with all it's consequences, using history, especially Einstein's work, to bring it all into perspective - and do it respectfully acknowldging the possibility that God may be the prime agency behind the origin of the universe after all, as Einstein freguently stated. No religious tome, this is a book about science, but without an adherence to an antiseptic mindset that exterminates God as possible.

An infinite, accelerating, and homogeneous universe.......2004-12-21

A positive cosmological force contributes to the density of the vacuum. Einstein theory describes the universe as infinite in span, homogenous, and isotropic; any point in space can be a center of mass; closer universes recede slower and the further universes recede faster; and space is teeming with energy. Hubble observed that star speed was proportional to the distance suggesting space expands like a raising cake.

The cosmological constant in the field theory is the repulsive force countering the attractive force of gravity.

Alan Gluth's inflationary universe theory describes the cosmos as flat, big, and uniform. The critical mass of the universe is the density to cause collapse. Gluth derived the critical mass of the Universe when it was young, 300,000 years, too 15 decimals. Gluth believed the Universe was flat The Universe radiation was homogeneous. The horizontal problem question raise the following scenerio, if two people look at a star 13 billion light years apart and they are moving close to the speed of light; it is very probable that the light from one star will reach the other star because of an accumulate distance of 26 billion light years. So how can the radiation be homogeneous? Gluth theorized that stars are accelerating into an infinite space and the gravitational repulse must be causing it.

What is causing this acceleration? Funny energy acts on the fabric of space-time making it expand faster. Omega is the ratio of the actual density of the space-time fabric and the critical density. If the ratio k is zero, the space-time fabric is flat; if k is positive the universe is a spherical geometry; and if k is negative the space-time is hyperboloid.

Einsteins equation Ruv - I/2guv R = -8 pi G Tuv is transformed into (R'/R)^2 + k/R^2 = (8 pi G/3) * p. Here is what the symbols mean: 1) p is the density of the universe 2) R is the scale factor that measures the universe 3) R' is the rate of change of the Universe 4) g is the geometry of the universe. The geometry of the universe is hyperbolic according to general equations given by Gauss, Bolyai, and Lobachevsky. 5) G is the Newton gravitational constant 6) Tuv is the energy, momentum, and matter component. There are 4x4=16-(4 redundant)= 10 components that describe the tensor space-time geometry. The space-time geometry looks the same everywhere and is hyperboloid in space. The cosmological constant accounts for the expansion countering gravity and accelerates towards infinity.

Neta Bahcall, the density mass in the universe is 20 percent of the mass to effect slowdown.

Saul Perlmutter, in 1985 took 20 images of Super Novas and discovered 7 billion years ago the expansion slowed down but as growth occurred the distance increased as so did the speed.
Author Eddington proved Einstein theory that sunlight would bend 1.75 arcs as it pasted near the Sun's mass.

God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity and the Expanding Universe

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Whoa! This will knock you on your can!

God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity and the Expanding Universe
Amir Aczel
Manufacturer: Piatkus
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Cosmology | Astronomy | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0749920823

Customer Reviews:

Whoa! This will knock you on your can!.......2007-03-28

God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity and the Expanding Universe
by Amir D. Aczel

Aczel is an author with powerful credentials, as the author of "Fermat's Last Theorem." That book was over my head mathematically.

"God's Equation" is a riveting read. The author commits the first chapter to explain the importance of Supernovae and their classifications to our understanding of the nature of the universe. This is the groundwork, and I had no difficulty at all understanding it.

Next, the author gives a biographical sketch of Albert Einstein, whose work is fundamental to our general understanding today. Particularly important is a piece of work that Einstein had dismissed as flawed, termed the Cosmological Constant. As it turns out, this bit of mathematics may be the key to our understanding of the phenomenon of a universe that is not only EXPANDING, but the outermost galaxies are accelerating away at a rate faster than the innermost galaxies. What does this mean? According to Axcel's exciting book, astrophysicists can only conclude that the universe is INFINITE.

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God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe
Amir D. Aczel
Manufacturer: Four Walls Eight Windows
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NUS11W

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God's Equation : Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe
Amir Aczel
Manufacturer: Four Walls Eight Windows
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000O64CWC

Book Description

Seeking to introduce molecular thermodynamics in a way that is more congruent with the present day, it approaches the subject from a statistical basis, rather than traditional phenomenological bulk phase behavior and continuum mechanics arguments. Thus, topics are discussed in a different sequence than is encountered in more traditional texts; the presentation of material begins with the molecular argument and later expands to bulk phase behavior. Chapters cover thermal and mechanical processes, structured particle systems and interacting particle systems, multicomponent systems, macroscopic process considerations, electrolyte systems, and more. Worked examples and end-of-chapter problems are included.

Book Description

"Fascinating, imaginative, and stimulating, The Ghosts of Evolution is a wonderful piece of writing--well worth reading by anyone interested in nature and its myriad components." --Michael J. Balick, The New York Botanical Garden.

A new vision is sweeping through ecological science: The dense web of dependencies that makes up an ecosystem has gained an added dimension--the dimension of time. Every field, forest, and park is full of living organisms adapted for relationships with creatures that are now extinct. In a vivid narrative, Connie Barlow shows how the idea of "missing partners" in nature evolved from isolated, curious examples into an idea that is transforming how ecologists understand the entire flora and fauna of the Americas. This fascinating book will enrich the experience of any amateur naturalist, as well as teach us that the ripples of biodiversity loss around us are just the leading edge of what may well become perilous cascades of extinction.

Customer Reviews:

An awesome book!.......2007-09-30

This book does a great job of explaining the history of many of our common plants and foods, and why they are what they are. It's a great tool for helping us understand how foods have co-evolved with us and with other species. The story is basic to our understanding of the whole web of life. It's an awesome and extremely understandable and fascinating book. Buy it!

Ghosts, ghosts, hauntings, ghosts . . . what?.......2006-10-25

Anachronistic fruiting structures and their traditional, but unfortunately extinct, dispersers makes for a fascinating scientific/natural history topic. Unfortunately, it was Ms. Barlow who tackled this one and in the first 13 pages has made more references to 'ghosts' and 'haunted groves' than my scientific stomach can retain. To be fair, the first chapter is entitled 'Ghost Stories' - what should I have expected?! If I'd read the Table of Contents and skimmed its content, I probably would have recognized the work for what it seems to be - a knock-off parasite of the scholarly paper-back book genre. Who the hell are the Perseus Book Group anyway -- certainly not Harvard Press!

The Ghosts of Evolution.......2005-09-01

The Ghosts of Evolution is based on some very interesting observations, and the science cited is worth looking into. I would thoroughly recommend this to anyone who is seriously interested in evolutionary theory.
On the downside the book does suffer from the fact that, while the idea is intriguing, it has been spread to thin. It is too long, and too chatty, nevertheless, the basic contention proposed in the book is fascinating enough to make it worth reading

Not bad, but hardly serious science.......2002-12-06

If you lived a few thousands or tens of thousands of years after the last of the dinosaurs had died out, you might have seen something very much like what Ms. Barlow describes in Ghosts of Evolution - plants that had evolved with dinosaurs in mind, but which now had to fend for themselves, dispersing their seeds without the benefit of large, grazing herbivores to whose presence they had adapted.

We live in a comparable age. Innumerable species have been rendered extinct, including a large percentage of the so-called "megafauna" - large vertebrates like Mammoths - largely through the action of humans. To the extent that plants and animals evolved strategies for cooperative coexistence, which is hardly unusual, and to the extent that the plants are able to survive for thousands of years in spite of losing their preferred method of seed distribution, we might expect to find plants whose seeds were "overbuilt" for the animals currently distributing them.

And so it was with high hopes that I picked up this book. Sadly, though, I cannot join the chorus of gushing praise. Ghosts of Evolution is a pleasant book. But it seems to want to be taken as serious science, even as it is presented in a chatty, breezy style which makes that almost impossible. At one point, after several chapters of having referred to recent and fossilized dung in both the vernacular and the vulgar, Ms. Barlow worries whether naming the fox that visits her home "Miss Foxy" will be appropriate in a "serious" science book. She needn't have worried. By the time that passage appears, all pretext of serious science had been lost. If any doubt remains, it is erased at the end of the book, when the author dons a plant costume, seeds dangling from her head, and eulogizes the Mammoths that no longer graze upon her pods. Say what you will of scientific popularizers like Carl Sagan, but I never saw Dr. Sagan wear an astrolabe on his head.

Ghosts balances on a fence between describing ongoing research and explaining a well-established scientific principle. It is a wonderfully sensible notion that plants, which evolved seeds designed to be dispersed by specific fauna that is now extinct, hobble along without the brutes to which they were adapted. Most of the examples do justice to the theory; the reader's imagination can carry the notion to its logical conclusion, even if the book fails to establish the facts necessary to make a particularly compelling case.

A weakness of Ghosts is the insertion of many utterly non-scientific "experiments" by the author. These include feeding supposed "ghost" seeds to animals that may, or may not behave like the supposed agents of dispersion from the Pleistocene. If an elephant eats an Osage orange, success! That may (or may not) suggest that Mammoths age Osage oranges as well. If not, well, maybe elephants aren't exactly like Mammoths after all. Or perhaps they're just naturally suspicious of new, odd-smelling, odd-tasting food. Considering the differences in food preferences between my wife and myself - both members of the same species, and born in the same small town - I find it incredible that anyone would pass off such shabby anecdotal information as "evidence" of a scientific theory, much less try to pass the entire book off as a "serious" scientific work.

As a decidedly popular work of science writing, bringing a very interesting scientific idea to the folks, Ghosts works fairly well. Even as such, I am not a big fan. I still find the addition of non-scientific "experiments" completely improper. But its very easy reading, and mostly enjoyable.

Who mourns for the mastodons?.......2002-06-24

"The tusks that clashed in mighty brawls
Of mastodons, are billiard balls..."
--from a poem by Arthur Guiterman

The exciting idea in this book is that there are trees that "lament" the passing of the mastodons and the other extinct megafauna that once distributed their seeds. What animal now regularly eats the avocado whole, swallows the seed and excretes it far from the tree in a steamy, nourishing pile of dung? No such animal exists in the Western Hemisphere to which the avocado is native. (Barlow reports that elephants in Africa, where the avocado has been introduced, eat the avocado and do indeed excrete its pit whole.)

How about the mango with its pulp that adheres so tightly to the rather large pit? As Barlow surmises, such fruits were "designed" for mutualists that would take the fruit whole and let the pit pass through their digestive systems to emerge intact for germination away from the mother tree. Note that the avocado pit is not only too large to pass comfortably through the digestive system of any current native animal of the Americas, but is also highly toxic so that such an animal would have quickly learned not to chew it. Note too that the mango pit is extremely hard, thus encouraging a large animal to swallow it along with the closely adhering pulp rather than try to chew it or spit it out. Consider also the papaya. The fruit are large and soft so that a large animal could easily take one into its mouth and just mash it lightly and swallow. Note too that the fruits of the papaya tree grow not high in the tree, nor is the tree a low lying bush. Instead the tree is taller than a bush but its fruits are clustered at a height supermarket convenient for a large animal to pluck.

Barlow considers a number of other trees, the honey locust and the osage orange, for example, as examples of ecological anachronisms, trees that have out-lived their mutualists and consequently must form new partnerships with other seed distributors or face extinction. For those trees that have pleased humans, the avocado, the mango, the papaya, etc., there is no immediate danger, but some other trees are at the edge of extinction. Their fruits fall to the ground and stay there until they rot. New trees grow only down hill when an occasional flood of water moves their fruit to a new location.

Barlow also sees ghosts from the Mesozoic era. She writes, "Ghosts of dinosaurs are easy to conjure in October and November wherever city landscapers planted ginkgo trees...even when I forget to look for the ghosts of dinosaurs my nose alerts me to their presence. Only a carrion eater could find the odor of fallen ginkgo fruit appealing. Before beginning this book, I wrongly blamed the alcoholic homeless for the vomitlike stench in Washington Square Park." (p. 12)

In short this book is about those trees--anachronisms--have been without their mutualists since the mass extinction of the megafauna of the Western Hemisphere that took place about 13,000 years ago. It is a popular expansion on some original work done by ethnologist Daniel H. Janzen and paleontologist Paul S. Martin, their seminal paper appearing in the journal Science in 1982. Connie Barlow's prose is not only very readable, but is full of the excitement of scientific discovery, vivid and concrete, and packed with an amazing amount of information so that not only the trees described, but the giant sloths, mastodons and mammoths--the ghosts of harvests past--come alive on the pages.

What Barlow does more than anything is open our eyes to the ecological nature of fruit and the relationships that exist between trees and the animals that eat the fruit. We learn how color, taste, aroma, texture, nutritional value, toughness of rind, size, shape, number of seeds and how they are encased, etc.--how all these qualities of fruit have evolved to entice the animals that will faithfully distribute the seeds, but also how some qualities discourage other animals, "pulp thieves" or "seed predators," that benefit from the food provided by the tree, but do not help in its propagation.

The story of the desert gourd was of particular interest to me because during many walks in the chaparral and deserts of California I have come across this vine with its hard, dry and unattractive gourds that were never picked or eaten. Barlow theorizes that the plant is also an anachronism, and that there did exist in the past animals that found the gourds, if not delicious, at least palatable.

Another curious anachronism reported on is the devil's claw of the Chihuahuan desert of Mexico. This plant produces a most amazing apparatus that wraps itself around an animal's foot and claw-like clings to the animal, dribbling its seeds to the ground as the animal moves. There is a photo of the claw on page 151 wrapped around a human ankle. Incidentally, the text is enhanced by a number of interesting black and white photos of the trees and their fruits.

This is one of the most interesting and original books on evolution that I have read in recent years, and one of the most informative.

Book Description

This proceedings contains up-to-date reviews on heavy ion physics CP violation, effective lagrangians, experimental techniques, charm hadron production, the physics of electron-proton collisions, and Tevatron physics. A number of short seminars give an overview of the state of the art in particle physics reaching from experimental to phenomenological and theoretical physics.

Book Description

Sixty-three million cats are now pets in U.S. households, and the humans they live with know all too well that they have minds of their own and mysterious mental and communicative abilities that stagger the imagination.

In his new novel The Politicats Tennessean Tom Williams, a former newspaperman who has handled advertising and public relations in more than 50 political races (winning nearly 90 per cent of them) has created two shrewd felines who conspire to sabotage the presidential campaign of a conniving, villainous and extremely wealthy United States senator. Will they succeed?

Meet the feline protagonists of this hilarious and heartwarming political satire: One is Mr. Grover, a huge, elderly, battle-scarred former stray who is now the beloved friend of Gov. Seth Goodfellow. The other is Napoleon, an aristocratic red-orange longhair,whose human is talented young Washington newspaper reporter Stanley Blister, on leave from his job to handle media relations in the governor's campaign for his party's presidential nomination.

When the two cats discover that the governor's opponent, U.S. Senator Desmond Durth, was once a medical research doctor who collected stray cats -- including Mr. Grover -- for vivisection and other cruel and painful laboratory experiments, they decide that the nation as a whole, animals in general and cats in particular must be saved from having a monster such as this in the White House.

The story of how they send Durth's campaign down in flames and foil the senator's dirty tricks reflects political savvy an experienced spin doctor would envy. It is full of suspense, surprises and just plain hilarity, and leaves the reader smiling and well-satisfied.

The Politicats is funny, intelligent political satire, and author Williams has plenty to say through his delightfully outspoken cat characters about the absurdities of the American political system as well as of the human race.

This is a book for people who love and respect all animals and hope -- unrealistically, perhaps -- that one day there will be at least a few political officeholders who can also be loved and respected.

Williams began his career as a reporter and later an editorial writer for the Chattanooga, Tenn., News-Free Press. His articles, on many different subjects, have appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout the nation.

He is also the author of Always Paddle Your Own Canoe, the widely acclaimed biography of eccentric businesswoman Anna Safley Houston, who accumulated the world's finest collection of antique glass and porcelain and founded Chattanooga's famed Houston Museum of Decorative Arts.

The author admits that for many years he has been owned by various cats, who have been valuable consultants in his research as to cat attitudes and capabilities.

Customer Reviews:

Could this be the future of politics?.......2006-06-30

Napoleon is a large marmalade tabby of Persian ancestry who is in charge of Stanley Blister, a young, idealistic reporter. Stanley is taking a leave of absence from the Potomac Periscope to join the presidential campaign of Gov. Goodfellow as a media specialist (read PR). It seems that in this particular election cycle, the candidates (ahem) all agree on the basic issues, and nobody is riled up about anything, so it all comes down to what kind of person "the people" want for president. Stanley's job is to find out what that is, and to present the governor as that person.

Stanley and Napoleon take up temporary residence in the governor's guest house where Napoleon makes the acquaintence of Mr. Grover, an elderly and battered former stray now the longtime companion of the governor. Mr. Grover is tired of sharing his human with the public and doesn't want him to run for president but changes his mind when he meets his opponent, one Senator Durth. It turns out that Durth once ran an illegal drug testing lab using cats as his guinea pigs, and Mr. Grover had been taken from a shelter under false pretenses to be one of his unwilling subjects.

Although he had managed to escape unharmed, Mr Grover has not forgotten his former captor, and enlists Napoleon's help to prevent this dastardly person from gaining such a high office. While I cannot say I wholeheartedly endorse their tactics, they do succeed in derailing the Senator's campaign, at least temporarily.

However, Durth still has a couple of tricks up his sleeve, tricks that once again place Mr. Grover's life in jeopardy. Now it's up to Napoleon, with Stanley's help, to put things right and bring down the nefarious senator for good.

I recommend The Politicats to all lovers of cats and haters of evil.

Reviewed by Kathie Freeman, author of Catwalk, a feline adventure story.

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