Total Business Planning: A Step-by-Step Guide with Forms

Book Description

Total Business Planning: A Step-by-Step Guide integrates strategic, operational, and financial planning in this comprehensive resource. Now completely revised and expanded, this popular business guide answers key questions concerning the preparation and structure of a business plan. With special focus on creative thinking and vision process, it provides methodologies for successfully constructing feasibility studies for new products, building short-term operation plans for business units, and creating plans aimed at the capital markets. Covering the nine levels of the planning process, Total Business Planning addresses such essential topics as vision, philosophy and mission, corporate objectives, tactics and projections, and budgeting. Along with an exhaustive appendix and helpful definitions, you'll also find a disk with easy-to-use form templates to make the planning job easier.

Customer Reviews:

Innovative, easy to use; beginners to professionals benefit.......1999-05-22

The third edition is a significant improvement. Chapters on Vision and on Budgeting have been added. Also, there is a Microsoft compatible disk of all the forms to make use easier. And, Wiley provides a downloadable site of PowerPoint slides to be used by anyone wishing to use the book as the basis for teaching planning to an organization.

Average customer rating:

Peddler of Quotas, Heterophobia and Balkanization

Insightful and Inclusive: A Must Read for Managers/Trainers

The Diversity Factor: Capturing the Competitive Advantage of a Changing Workforce
Elsie Y. Cross , and Margaret Blackburn White
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Organizational Behavior | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books
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Beyond Race and Gender: Unleashing the Power of Your Total Work Force by Managing Diversity

Developing Competency to Manage Diversity: Readings, Cases & Activities

The Diversity Toolkit : How You Can Build and Benefit from a Diverse Workforce

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Creating the Multicultural Organization: A Strategy for Capturing the Power of Diversity

ASIN: 0786308583

Book Description

The face of America is changing. The workforce of the 21st century will include growing numbers of women and people of color. American corporations and other organizations must develop new management skills if they are to remain competitive in the new environment. This collection of the most-requested articles from the quarterly journal The Diversity Factor, provides both theoretical and practical information that will help organizations learn to ``manage diversity'' successfully. Consultants and academicians describe processes that are being used to knock down organizational barriers that prevent the new employees from achieving their full potential, while managers and executives demonstrate how these processes are being implemented in their organizations. The Diversity Factor offers readers valuable information on every aspect of diversity including: Strategies for managing diversity in the workplace; Methods for building leadership skills; Discussions of the barriers managers face and how to overcome them.

Customer Reviews:

Peddler of Quotas, Heterophobia and Balkanization.......2003-03-13

Many corporations have adopted this book as part of their Corporate Diversity Program. This is a tragic shame, as the authors do little more than attack traditional values and American culture under the guise of diversity. While this book is marketed in the business category, it is in fact, a thinly veiled collection of radical left wing political writings. This book does not subscribe to Dr. King's "Content of their Character" premise, but rather focuses on dominant and non-dominant "groups". Equal rights are not the focus of the authors, but rather equal outcomes, ignoring the relative effectiveness of differing patterns of behavior, cultural values or economic practices in producing wealth, advancing careers or building functional communities. The authors believe that decisions should only have consequences if the decision maker is part of a "dominant" group.

In the corporations that the authors would have us build, "incorrect" points of view, including values, facts and integrity are cast aside if they conflict with the authors "correct" worldview. Family and Christian values are dismissed as homophobia and heterosexism, in effect creating a new prejudice to marginalize Evangelical Christians. Those who simply believe in a free society based on equal rights and equal application of laws are simply dismissed out of hand. The editors and authors of this anthology advocate suppression of free speech for the sake of their utopian "non-judgemental" (IF and only if you fit one of their acceptable "groups") vision.

This book is divisive. Instead of advancing diversity it serves only to undermine integrity and trust. By substituting radical orthodoxy for open dialog, it in effect creating a new segregation between those who believe in American culture and those who would change it to something more closely resembling socialism. Instead of wasting your time on this, read Vision of the Annointed, or Race and Culture by economist and social scientist Thomas Sowell, A Dream Deferred, by Shelby Steele, Diversity by Peter Wood, Who Stole Feminism by Christina Hoff Sommers or The End of Racism by Dinesh D'Souza!

Insightful and Inclusive: A Must Read for Managers/Trainers.......1997-01-14

The Diversity Factor shows the emerging maturity in the understanding of valuing and managing diversity in today's workplace. By incorporating writings and viewpoints of those other than the Editors, the benefits of diveristy and multiple perspectives are promoted within the book itself. This alone supports the shifting paradigms about the richness and merits of diversity. Cross and Blackburn White are to both be acknowledged for this refreshing and engaging publication, in addition to their continued efforts publishing The Diversity Factor periodical. The Editors step out of the comfort zone by addressing differnces that make many uncomfortable but yet are very important, such as the gay and lesbian worker and how their difference matters. Whenever a diversity book, management program, or training program exclude sexual orientation, promoting and inclusive understanding of diversity is greatly diserviced and undermined. Cross and Blackburn White break free of this dilemma by embracing inclusion. As a Diveristy Awareness and Communications Educator, I highly recommend this insightful and inclusive reading to all managers and diveristy educators as a valuable resouce. Frank Stonehouse

Book Description

Providing a comprehensive and clear account of the instruments and techniques used in modern astronomy and astrophysics, the fourth edition of Astrophysical Techniques continues to offer information on all astronomical observations. Retaining the aims of earlier editions, the author unifies the concepts through lucid language and cohesive organization of the book. Revised and updated, this book encompasses an ever-diverging array of observational techniques using the detection-imaging-ancillary instruments pattern. The first several sections emphasize the detection of radiation or other information carrier as well as the instruments and techniques used to facilitate and optimize that detection. Later chapters discuss photometers and spectroscopes in detail while also examining the techniques of astrometry, polarimetry, and magnetometry. New to the Fourth Edition: · Many instruments and techniques included for the first time · A section that supplies Web sites and online resources · Elimination of archaic topics, providing the most up-to-date information available Astrophysical Techniques, Fourth Edition maintains comprehensive coverage of the instruments and techniques used in current astronomy and astrophysics, making it a superb reference for undergraduate and postgraduate students in astronomy, amateur astronomers, and professional astronomers.

Book Description

Charged Particle and Photon Interactions with Matter offers in-depth perspectives on phenomena of ionization and excitation induced by charged particle and photon interactions with matter in vivo and in vitro. This reference probes concepts not only in radiation and photochemistry, but also in radiation physics, radiation biochemistry, and radiation biology as well as recent applications in medicine and material, environmental, space, and biological science and engineering. It studies reports on the interactions of high-energy photons, specifically in the vacuum ultraviolet-soft X-ray region to offer fundamental information on the primary processes of the interactions of charged particles with matter.

Book Description

This book presents a collection of linked essays written by one of the leading philosophers of biology, Kim Sterelny, on the topic of biological evolution. The first half of the book explores most of the main theoretical controversies about evolution and selection, while the second half applies some of these ideas in considering cognitive evolution. These essays, some never before published, form a coherent whole that defends not just an overall conception of evolution, but also a distinctive take on cognitive evolution.

Book Description

Through the study of the ideas of the great fathers of theoretical physics, such as Ampère, Weber, Helmholtz, Maxwell, Boltzmann, Einstein, Schrödinger, et al., this book affords an improved understanding of modern physics. My main field of interest concerns the physicists' conceptions of the methods and nature of science. In my view, innovative conceptions contributed to important achievements in theoretical physics. Dissenting from the historiography of the linear development of scientific ideas, I duly underline the fact that, in the passage from nineteenth-century electrodynamics to theoretical physics, the process of mathematization varied remarkably, ranging from Ampère's and Weber's algebraization to Maxwell's attention to mathematical analogies and dimensional analysis, not to mention Einstein's non-Euclidean approach to general relativity and the via-operators formulation of quantum theory. I describe how, in the same period of time, physicists modified their ideas on the theory-experiment relationship, as shown, for example, by Hertz's theoretical holism, and by Boltzmann's discrediting of crucial experiments. I report a large number of not easily available quotations from primary sources in the history of physics and of references to the recent secondary literature. As such, this book will prove a useful addition to the culture of modern scientists and philosophers, and it could be influential in orienting teachers towards new approaches to teaching physics at undergraduate and graduate levels. It is aimed at historians of physics, epistemologists, professors of physics, PhD candidates in history of science, undergraduate and graduate students in history of physics and of science, and, last but not least, the cultured lay general reader.

Average customer rating:

A book you can reread endlessly and still find new perspectives..

I didn't see the charm in this at all

excellent

Anywhere But Here

Kind of wishing I was anywhere but there

Anywhere but Here
Mona Simpson
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Lost Father

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Anywhere But Here

Runaway Runaway

ASIN: 0679737383
Release Date: 1992-01-15

Amazon.com

"Strangers always love my mother," Ann August tells us at the start of Anywhere But Here. "And even if you hate her, can't stand her, even if she's ruining your life, there's something about her, some romance, some power. She's absolutely herself. No matter how hard you try, you'll never get to her. And when she dies, the world will be flat, too simple, reasonable, fair." Indeed, over the course of the dozen or so years chronicled in Mona Simpson's first novel, Ann and everyone else related to the charming, delusional Adele learn this the hard way. Ann does hate her at times; Adele does indeed come pretty close to ruining Ann's life on numerous occasions, or at least scarring it, and yet, ultimately, it isn't possible not to love her. As Ann puts it: "The thing about my mother and me is that when we get along we're just the same."

This is a woman who uproots her child from Wisconsin and moves to Los Angeles, leaving behind a dull husband (not Ann's father--who wandered off long ago but makes appearances here in memories), under the premise that life will be beautiful and Ann will become a famous television star. But her lifelong dream and goal ("It was our secret, a nighttime whispered promise" turns out, like so many things in the Augusts' lives, to be lackluster when it becomes reality. Adele merely feeds on fantasy and drags her daughter along.

Nevertheless, it's hard not to worship her. We hear from her mother, her sister, from Ann, and finally from Adele herself, and no matter how she's used people, what trouble she's gotten into, or what lies she's told--and there are plenty of all three--a certain amount of awe always remains. When we come upon Ann's proclamation that "it's always the people like my mother, who start the noise and bang things, who make you feel the worst; they are the ones who get your love." It's startling to realize how heartily we agree with her. Anywhere But Here gives truth to this statement in a way that few books ever have. It's dense with misery and amazement all tangled together--a realistic and thus rare portrait of love. --Melanie Rehak

Book Description

Anywhere But Here is a moving, often comic portrait of wise child Ann August and her mother, Adele, a larger-than-life American dreamer. As they travel through the landscape of their often conflicting ambitions, Ann and Adele bring to life a novel that is a brilliant exploration of the perennial urge to keep moving, even at the risk of profound disorientation. Simpson's first novel is ultimately a heart-rendering tale of a mother and daughter's invaluable relationship.

"The two women in this book are American originals. Ann is a new Huck Finn, a tough, funny, resourceful love of a girl. Adele is like no one I've encountered, at once deplorable and admirable--and altogether believable."
--Walker Percy

" Anywhere But Here is a wonder: big, complex, masterfully written, it's an achievement that lands [Simpson] in the front ranks of our best novelists."
--Newsweek

Customer Reviews:

A book you can reread endlessly and still find new perspectives.........2006-08-02

Like many other adolescents, Ann August is torn between loving and hating her mother. For Adele August refuses to be ordinary...the thing that her young daughter longs for most.

The two embark on a road trip to California, where Ann is to become famous. Really, she is just a pawn for her mother's fantasies.

The story flashes back and forth between present-day and the past, interspersing Ann's perspective with that of her mother, grandmother and aunt.

This is truly Simpson's finest work.

I didn't see the charm in this at all.......2005-08-22

To me, this was a very disjointed, sad picture of an extremely dysfunctional relationship between a mother who is an emotionally manipulative child, and a daughter who is forced to be an adult because of her mother's shortcomings. The Amazon review talks about how compelling and magnetic the mother's character, Adele, is, but I didn't find her to be that at all. Her character was pathetic, repellent and disturbing - a classic portrayal of a woman who never should have been a parent. I saw shades of my own relationship with my mother in the relationship between Adele and Ann, but thankfully my own mother was responsible and stable and understood who the adult was in our relationship. Adele comes across as a shallow manipulator, nothing more, and I fail to see how anyone could find her character magnetic and charming. I just saw her as petulant, childish and unstable.

Other reviewers have mentioned the other problems with the book - Ann, as a lead character, is very dull and seems to have very little emotional reaction to living what she clearly knows is a very abnormal life. The flashbacks with the aunt's and grandmother's lives didn't seem to have much of a point, and the way the story jumped back and forth through time was confusing and made the book seem to lack cohesion. There is also not any plot to this, it's just a series of recountings of events in the lives of these women. Through the course of the book Ann grows up and leaves Adele so she can go to college, and she only rarely sees Adele again. Other than that, there's not much of a story arc.

I really can't recommend this book. Maybe if someone had a dysfunctional childhood with a parent like Adele they would relate to it, but I didn't find much to like or anything that was all that compelling.

excellent .......2004-12-03

Seems like most of the other posters ought to stick to romance novels. Mona Simpson's first book is packed with rich imagery, irresistible storytelling, and vivid characterizations. In particular, Adele is certainly one of the most appalling mother characters in contemporary fiction. Grandiose, manipulative, and narcissistic, she is a monster for the ages. (Despite what the Amazon blurb says, I think it's easy not to fall in love with her.) Simpson has said in interviews that the book isn't autobiographical, but I can't help but wonder. That's how vivid it is.

Anywhere But Here.......2004-05-26

I had to read a book for English 11 and this was the book I chose. I had a semester to read it and finished it the last week of the semester because it was so hard to read. It wasn't difficult text, it just wasn't as interesting as I expected it to be. I expected it to be a lot like the movie, but only little parts of it were. It was an okay book though that's why I gave it a three star rating. I would recommend this book to anyone who hasn't seen the movie, and then they won't be expecting certain things.

Kind of wishing I was anywhere but there.......2004-02-23

In Mona Simpson's "Anywhere But Here", she shows a young girl's life as she grows up with her self-obsessed mother. Simpson fills the book with many short stories that have almost no connection to the rest of the book. The first few pages are a hard read because of the many characters to connect and the many metaphors, similes, and long description paragraphs.Simpson doesn't give enough description of Ann or her her mother, Adele, to get a clear picture of ages, looks, or motives. Although the book is an interesting look at a mother and daughter's roller-coaster ride of a relationship, it is not a book that I would recommend investing in.

Average customer rating:

So-so sequel -- has moments. 3.4 stars
Smart SF
great treat for armchair science fiction travelers
Pretty good story

Anywhere But Here
Jerry Oltion
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0765306190
Release Date: 2005-02-10

Book Description

In a world dominated by America's heavy hand, an independent scientist reveals the secret of fast, cheap interstellar travel, sparking an exodus like none in history. When anyone with a few hundred dollars and a little ingenuity can build their own spaceship, even American citizens can't wait to get out from under the United States's domineering thumb.Trent and Donna Stinson, of Rock Springs, Wyoming, seal up their pickup for vacuum and go looking for a better life among the stars, but they soon learn that you can't outrun your problems. America's belligerent foreign policy is expanding just as fast as the world's refugees, threatening to destroy humanity's last chance for peaceful coexistence. When their own government tries to kill them for exercising the freedoms that people once took for granted, Trent and Donna reluctantly admit that America must be stopped. But how can patriotic citizens fight their own country? And how can they succeed where the rest of the world has failed?

Customer Reviews:

So-so sequel -- has moments. 3.4 stars.......2006-02-21

_____________________________________________
This is a weaker sequel to his lively and entertaining The Getaway Special (2002, recommended), which, you may recall, was cheap star travel in septic-tank spaceships. Here they've advanced to sealed-cab electric pickups, with the Secret Stardrive module hidden inside. Which is illegal in a cartoonishly-obtuse USA. Does have a nice Heinleinian wild-planet romance/problem-solving story nested within. C+, has moments.

Happy reading--
Peter D. Tillman

Smart SF.......2005-09-20

A marvelous read. It's a fun, no-holds barred "what if" story that combines the best of action/adventure SF with intellegent, likeable, commonsense characters. What if anyone with a little ingenuity could leave the planet? Oltion gives us his answer in a tightly-written, well-thought out narrative that works as an adventure, a commentary on politics and social issues (what's a good space story without some soapboxes thrown in), and a survival story -- all painted in realism with a brush of good physics, astronomy, and a touch of biology. Enjoy!

great treat for armchair science fiction travelers .......2005-02-27

In an unspecified time in the future, the global conquering United States is ready to go to war at anytime with countries that don't bow down to America's superiority. Meanwhile the hyperdrive engine makes it cheap to travel to other planets. Those people who value freedom and resent the heavy-handedness of the United States colonized planets all over the galaxy.

It is now illegal to build a hyperdrive vehicle and leave the planet because much of America's most precious resources, the people, are gone. After Trent and Judy Stinson lose their jobs they decide to visit the colonized worlds but while on the French planet of Mirabeau, the United States attacks using asteroid rocks as bombs. When they leave, they become lost in space and end up in an unexplored part of the galaxy. They find a habitable planet so they can fix their damaged hyperdrive but must depart quickly though there are no direct life forms dangerous to humans, the game and water is inimical to Earthlings.

Freedom is a powerful motivator for people to leave their homeland and go to the stars but the Stinsons really want to find a way to change how government operates so it could once again be the land of the free. Homeland security has become a dictatorial giant imagining enemies when none exist and drive people to do the very things they outlaw. Jerry Oltion is a master storyteller who takes readers on a spaceship ride that is exciting, dangerous and fun. Visiting inhabited colonized worlds and orbs where no sentient life exist makes this work of science fiction a great treat for armchair travelers who want to go stellar from their home.

Harriet Klausner

Pretty good story.......2005-02-23

A very strong politcal statement on today's issues set in the near future... It's an entertaining story but very light in the details. You will need to fill in a lot yourself.

The book bogs down in the middle but over-all I'd recommend it. You can kill it in one or two sittings.

Anywhere but Here (Northern Lights Books for Children)

Average customer rating:

Anywhere but Here (Northern Lights Books for Children)
Adele Dueck
Manufacturer: Tandem Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: School & Library Binding

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 061323099X

Average customer rating:

The un-Garfield
Getting some great reviews

Anywhere But Here
Tori Miki
Manufacturer: Fantagraphics Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Comic Strips | Comics & Graphic Novels | Subjects | Books

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Apollo's Song

ASIN: 1560976306

Book Description

The American debut of one of Japan's most distinctive humorous voices.

Tori Miki has won awards for his essays, screenplays and manga, including the prestigious Bunshun Manga Award. With four best-selling volumes released to date, the comic strip series Anywhere But Here is one of his greatest successes,

Running weekly in Japan's TV Bros, a respected magazine of television and media criticism, Anywhere But Here is a wordless comic strip that could perhaps best be described as "Monty Python meets The Far Side meets Zen humor." Miki's unnamed lead character (modeled after himself) works as a bookstore owner but somehow finds himself entangled with aliens, alternate realities, and other mysterious disturbances in the space-time continuum.

Like Gary Larson's The Far Side, Anywhere But Here is can leave you scratching your head in bemusement almost as often as it makes you laugh, but we've selected the very best of his first two volumes for this special collection, printed in an elegant two-color edition.

Customer Reviews:

The un-Garfield.......2006-05-10

This is a collection of one-page stories without text and unrelated to each other. The drawings are deceptively cute and more or less traditional. But the scripts are completely refreshing and read like something written in another planet. I don't know how to compare it to anything else, it is THAT original. The closest parallel I can find is to very old stuff like the Rarebit Fiend series by Winsor McKay or his Little Nemo, surreal and dream-like. But here there are no words, ever.

Some of the stories are laugh out loud funny. Some are surreal. Some are just very cute. A few I just don't get and read to me more like a zen mantra. This is no Garfield, it is unlike any other type of humor you've ever encountered.

Getting some great reviews.......2005-05-12

Entertainment Weekly chose it #1 on their "Must List" in their April 8, 2005 issue and had this to say:
"Sublime and silly: Nothing's lost in translation in these wordless Japanese strips and their bone-dry Zen humor."

Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review in their May 9th issue:
"The strips always begin with a simple premise: the man walking, fishing, talking or looking, and then, around panel six or seven, a surreal twist takes shape, revealing itself in the very last panel for maximum effect. Each development is wonderfully hallucinatory and inventive--never monotonous or predictable."

Volume 2 is already in production and readers can expect more of the same twisted humor. Give it a try!

Average customer rating:

Appealing Second Book
Long Beach Writer

Anytime but Now, Anywhere but Here
Marie Huskey
Manufacturer: Xlibris Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0738839930

Book Description

James spent his childhood being beaten by his alcoholic father and running to his grandmother and sister for love and protection. He lived his life according to his father's law: the fist. After his father dies he takes the opportunity to do things his way: drinking, gambling, stealing and anything else that is illegal. But when his grandmother dies he's forced to remember things he's not ready to remember.

When his sister comes back home after an eight year absence she's ready to move in and live life the way it used to be. But, James isn't ready for her return, not before he can confront some demons of his own that have been haunting him since his childhood.

Frankie has tried to please her mother her entire life. But her mother isn't willing to be pleased. Frankie is dying to please her until she meets James. She is like a rubberband that has been held back for years and is just waiting for someone to let her loose. He gives her the freedom to finally confront those who have hurt her.

When these two meet, they forge a friendship that can overcome the obstacles that loom large in their lives.

Customer Reviews:

Appealing Second Book.......2005-04-14

I love Huskey's sense of humor and tragic life like stories. Once I read the first book I couldn't wait to read this one. I love her style of writing.

Long Beach Writer.......2001-04-20

I read her first book because she was a local writer. Although I really liked her first book, I found that she had really improved as a writer on this one.

The subject matter has always been something that I can relate to in each of her books. Although at the base of each story there is something serious taking place she always laces it with humor so that the story doesn't seem as depressing.

Product Description

What if your dreams really did come true? Stacie Carson's fifteenth year is turning into a disaster. When her mother announces she is dying of cancer, and that her father, who Stacie thought was dead, will be taking over parenting, Stacie is sure things can't get any worse. Untilâ¿¦ she meets her new stepmother, Lucy Parker. Lucy becomes a modern day version of Cinderella's wicked stepmother. All Stacie wants is to go Anywhere but Here. Be careful what you wish forâ¿¦

Customer Reviews:

Good but Ordinary.......2006-08-13

This book is pretty good. As a foreigner, my english is not very good. But this book hardly contains any hard to understand usage of grammar, dialect, ... etc. Personally, I have read many books with similar plots but this book can be summarized as a modern Cinderella.

fun to read.......2006-08-13

Although this book is short and contains a simple concept, it was a n easy reading one for children.

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