Principles of Accounting: Tools for Business Decision Making : Working Papers

Book Description

This book starts with a macro view of accounting information by presenting real financial statements. The authors establish how financial statements communicate the financing, operation, and investing activities of a business. To integrate the use of financial statements for decision making, the authors identify a finite set of tools necessary to make business decisions based on financial information. The Decision Toolkit is provided for the reader and integrated throughout the text.

Book Description

Corporate leaders are facing many new challenges: lack of confidence in corporate governance; flat economies throughout the industrialized world; the effects of increased globalization; and dramatic changes in employees ' working lives, to name but a few. This topical book looks at the requirements for effective leadership in these turbulent times.The book is written by a team of leading international experts who review the latest thinking on effective management strategies for the new world of work. Leaders of tomorrow, they propose, must manage their own performance and development, must create highly-motivated and skilful human resources, must lead on issues such as governance and ethics, and must lead change. Leading in Turbulent Times is the third in a series of books published by Blackwell, all of which tackle the challenges faced by organizations today, organizational responses to these challenges, and the effects of these responses on shareholders. The previous two books in the series are The Organization in Crisis (2000) and The New World of Work (2002).

Book Description

Written by experts actively working in the area, this book provides a review of the major diseases of fish caused by protozoan and metazoan parasites. The new edition has been thoroughly updated since publication of the first edition in 1995. It covers recent advances in the understanding of
fish diseases including the improvement of diagnostic techniques and understanding of phylogenetic relationships stemming from the application of molecular techniques. The book also contains more detailed information on pathogens that cause amoebiasis.

Customer Reviews:

Mars - The Story of a real planet.......2001-02-16

My interests in Mars were sparked by NASA missions such as Viking and Pathfinder but the background knowledge and overview of Mars as a planet came almost exclusively from this volume.

I had it on permanent revolving loan from my local library, and finally bought an out-of-print copy to enable me to scribble notes in the margin without qualms of conscience.

This is an excellent entry-level (for serious readers) book for Mars, distilling the 1000 page Kieffer et al. scientific tome to a manageable and readable volume. With this as a starting point, you will have a good understanding of the Viking era view of Mars.

Despite the passage of 25 years this view has much to commend it. the questions about Mars' evolution and the role of water remain cogent today.

You would have to go far to find a scientist who understood Mars as simply and comprehensively as Peter Cattermole, and who could put his thoughts into publicly-accessible words as clearly and as graphically.

And if you have trouble reading there are lots of good pictures!

Perhaps we will never see the likes of this book again? It dates from a time when one man could hold in his head everything we knew about Mars, and present it clearly to a wide range of readers. Modern Mars is more complicated and detailed than this, but I strongly encourage you to start reading here, and build on this basic but comprehensive undestanding of Mars.

Book Description

By unanimous agreement, this is simply the best work on the subject - the definitive book. Mr. Garrison, a mechanical engineer by training, built perhaps the finest rods ever - and describes how it's done. He died before the book was first published (in 1977) though his protégé, Hoagy B. Carmichael, completed it and brought it to publication. Essential reading for all who admire fine bamboo rods. A useful section is included on restoration, refinishing and repair as well. Now In Its Third Printing

Customer Reviews:

Bible of bamboo rod building.......1998-12-20

Garrison's book is one of the seminal references for anyone who endevours to build bamboo fly rods. It's also a great read for anyone who enjoys cane rods. Though I may never have the chance to cast a Garrison, I've gained a much greater appreciation of the care and craftsmanship that he invested in each of his rods.

Plus, it's a nice green color and looks impressive on a bookshelf.

Amazon.com

Some sports--the solitary ones, in particular--are simply more prone to mysticism and mystery than others. Golf, certainly. Long-distance running, of course. Fishing. Climbing. Each has a literature that confronts the essence of its lonely pursuit and explores the way the solitude and self-discipline these sports demand grow the spirit and fill the competitor. Lambert's graceful reflection on rowing is a lovely addition to the genre, part memoir, part narrative, part celebration of a relatively arcane endeavor, and utterly provocative. The superficial journey here is over water; the real one is internal. "Like Einstein," he writes, "we wish to know God's thoughts. We shall attempt to pry them loose with an oar. The raw elements of the sport are our teacher: the wind and the water, the boat and its oars, our own bodies and minds." Given those elements, it's no surprise that the education is a profound one. The surprise is how accessible and appealing it turns out to be. --Jeff Silverman

Book Description

In this wise and thrilling book, Criag Lambert turns rowing--personal discipline, modern Olympic sport, grand collegiate tradition--into a metaphor for a vigorous and satisfying life.

Customer Reviews:

not for athlete.......2007-04-17

This will be a short review. To use an example visit the sample extract that is offered on this web site. The author mentions a double head. He builds it up as something mythic and impossible. This is a joke. Six miles is nothing. Just nothing. Its a warm up for some. Sports writing is not easy but effort should be made to represent the true hardships of a sport, because if you fake it you also fake the joy that can be derived from the sport. Rowing is tough and you learn a lot about yourself from it but limiting it to oh its really cold in the morning and the hagiographies of US olympians is boring and misguided. I suggest Lambert visit a few more boat clubs.

I'm buying six copies.......2006-09-04

I generally read fiction for entertainment. And, in fact, generally loathe books anywhere in a stone's throw radius of the personal development genre. However, Mind Over Water really touched me. Lambert's insights are packaged in such a way that they both are easily absobed and entertaining. I'm buying a copy for each of my closest friends with the suggestion that they read it once per year, about 5 pages at a sitting.

Gaack! Just when I'd given up highlighting my books. . ........2005-01-31

"Mind Over Water" falls into the category of the memoir, highly personal and considered memories and musings. It's about rowing and, as the subtitle states: "Lessons on Life from the Art of Rowing." If you don't like this kind of book, steer clear. You also won't like "Green Thoughts: A Writer in The Garden." On the other hand, if you do like this kind of book, "Green Thoughts" is also recommended.

"Mind over Water" is about rowing internalized, what it means to row and race and how these lessons can be applied to life. As such, its primary goal is not so much instruction as translation. And translations, of course, are never exact, which may account for some of the animosity of other reviewers.

So what is "Mind Over Water" really about? It's not so much about rowing as it is about what rowing means to the author. As such, you can't really fault it for not being the book you might write about rowing or for not being an instruction manual. It has humbler ambitions. Think of it as an off-water musing.

In any case, I liked it. And, yes, I had to get to get out the highlighter. Among those who like the book, everyone is going to have favorite passages, as some of these reviews attest. Here are some of mine:

"Edges form outlines. If our boundaries determine our identities, then we learn who we are by finding our limits."

"Sliding between dark and shadow, between sunlight and the obscure, is the region of discovery."

"Staying on course limits your attention to the boat and its rowers, who are, after all, the motor that takes you there. The goal does not disclose itself until it is attained."

"Mistakes shine a spotlight on our model of reality and show us its flaws. Unexpected outcomes help us refine our picture of nature."

"Tall smokestacks rise from the powerhouse and waft plumes of smoke into the sky, the epitaph of fuel burned into power."

If this kind of writing disturbs or bores you, look elsewhere. If not, you might find "Mind Over Water" as enjoyable as I did.

as much about self-discovery as about rowing.......2004-09-25

A book that aspires to describe perfection better start with a sentence that aspires to perfection.

This is how Mind Over Water begins: "In the darkness, deep in silence, the lights --- green, red, a few of white --- surge ahead, in the rhythm of breathing."

If this were a class, Butler could riff for 10 minutes on that line. For now, let's leave it at this: You're in a long, narrow boat, with a skin that's just one-sixteenth of an inch thick and oars that extend fifteen feet. It's 5:45 a.m. on an October morning in Boston. It's chilly. And you are about to begin a race that is the equivalent of climbing Mt. Everest. On a Tuesday morning. Before work. Just for fun.

Okay, Craig Lambert, a veteran oarsman and a stylish writer, is a little bit crazy. Well, so are the best rowers. And so is Harry Parker, the Harvard crew coach whose exploits first got Lambert, a gifted amateur, interested in writing professionally about the sport.

You never heard of Harry Parker? He'd be thrilled. Recognition is the least thing he cares about. He's single-minded about something else: winning. And win he does. He became Harvard's crew coach in 1963, when he was just 27. For the next 6 years, Harvard did not lose a single intercollegiate race. His crews won 18 consecutive races against Yale. His winning percentage from 1963 to 1997 is .806 --- he is, very probably, the most successful coach in any sport in the whole and entire world.

Harry Parker has some voodoo wisdom that Craig Lambert has absorbed. And then there are the home truths Lambert's picked up himself along the way. Some samples:

"Speed demands that we risk our balance. Velocity comes with volatility... That which is stable is slow."

"Being part of a crew makes the individual shine; in rowing you pull harder and longer that you could ever alone because everyone else in the boat is depending on you."

"My years of rowing in eights [eight-man boats] convinced me that to succeed in this world we must be willing to do whatever is required despite what our mind says."

"Sometimes the best response to stormy weather is to unleash your own tempest. It is one way to restore equilibrium."

"Grabbing an early lead costs energy, an expense that may later haunt the front-runner... In practice, Parker would remind his rowers that when opponents jump out in front, you must make them pay the price."

"To build a winning crew, select the right athletes, place them in the proper seats, and allow for the freedom to create. In other words, hire the right people for the right jobs and manage with a long, loose leash."

If you're employed in almost any organization Butler can imagine, he'll bet that last idea is one you'd like to print out and slip under the boss's door. That's light years away from the sport of rowing --- and yet it's not New Age, hippy-dippy sloganeering. What it is, Butler submits, is writing at a level we're not used to seeing very often: prose that yokes close observation of the real world with deep wisdom about the world inside.

"We are out here in the darkness to reveal ourselves, to discover who we are," Lambert writes. "With the oars, we attempt things that we cannot do, we confront that which is beyond our capacities. Mind over water. The shells transport us into the unknown."

It almost makes you want to get out there some early morning and see how far, how fast, how smoothly you could make a boat --- or, really, your life --- go.

A Wonderful Book For Some.......2004-03-20

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and its musings, although I suspect that much of my appreciation can be explained by my: (1) being about the same age as the author; (2) having rowed occasionally and run daily along the Charles River; (3) having attended Harvard College and having heard much about Harry Parker and some of the Ivy League's great rowers; (4) having read "The Amateurs" and a number of other books on crew; and (5) appreciating good writing, no matter what the topic. Like some, but not all of the other Amazon reviewers, I found Lambert's analogies and life-lessons cogent and reaffirming. If you share any of my propensities, I highly recommend the book!

Mind over Water: Lessons on life from the art of rowing.

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Mind over Water: Lessons on life from the art of rowing.
Craig. Lambert
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KIV9ZM

Book Description

This book will help you teach yourself the writing and reading of all 46 characters each of Japanese hiragana and katakana syllabary from memory. By making use of a method of "imaginative memory," introduced in this book, you will be saved from the order of repetition. Following the method,
you will be able to write and read all Japanese Kana in three hours and retain them by means of the incredible mnemonic methods. Instructions at the bottom of each page will ask you to skip backwards and forwards through the book, following the best "learning order." The lessons will guide you step
by step through this process. As an added bonus, the book includes a supplement on "Learning How to Remember."

Customer Reviews:

Hit and Miss.......2007-10-16

I used this book and now know the hiragana backward and forward but also had to rely on Michael Rowley's great Kana Pict-o-Graphix book to get past some of the horrible convoluted thought processes that Heisig uses.

The system is fairly effective but some of the examples are a real stretch. Ni is easier to visualize as a knee cap than a cape being held to someone's knees by two daggers. E is just easier to rote memorize than trying to envision an ape sitting in a chalk circle using a puppy dog and its tail to draw daggers and n's and whatever on the floor. Mo is way easier to see as catch "mo" fish with 2 worms. Also, if you don't find his learning method effective you're stuck because ni depends on you learning ko his way...and so on. I found myself using the book strictly to learn the stroke order of the character halfway through and looking elsewhere for a better visualization/character reference. I can't imagine trying to learn kanji with a similar system.

Don't get me wrong. I used the book and scored 97% on an online 146 question hiragana flash test today. Not too shabby...but it's a mixed bag. Grab the other cheap little pocket book with the Kana Pict-o-Graphix as a supplement...you won't be let down.

Remembering the Kana Not Memorable at All.......2007-06-21

This book has a "creative" (if not downright silly) approach, there is no doubt. However, I wouldn't advise using Heisig's back-of-the-napkin approach. Far too dated (this book came out in 1978), far too gimmick-y.
You are better off buy something from Hiroko Storm, Michael Rowley or Peter X. Takahashi. This way, you know you are at least learning Japanese in a really Japanese way...

Jimi's Book of Japanese: A Motivating Method to Learn Japanese (Hiragana)

Surprisingly effective and time-saving.......2007-03-19

I agree with some other reviewers: it would be helpful if Heisig explained a bit better the "dictionary order" of the kana (essential for finding words in a dictionary). All in all, however, I found this to be a shockingly effective method for learning the kana, a task which I had struggled to master any number of times. I picked up the hiragana version of this book soon after arriving in Japan with my wife (then working on her dissertation in Japanese literature), convinced that I was doomed to utter illiteracy; two days later, I actually could read and remember all of the hiragana (the katakana followed soon after). Heisig's mnemonic method recalls those used by medieval and early modern writers--not much of a surprise, given his Jesuit training. Whatever the origins, the proof is in the pudding for me. While some reviewers thought Heisig's mind-pictures were absurd and frivolous, I found this to be the whole point--they stick in one's mind (I still remember the silly image of someone holding a comb between his knees, associated with the kana for "ni")!

Terrible mnemonics for the most part, not sure how this works so well for some people.......2007-01-04

First, let me say I had already memorized almost all of the hiragana by rote before I finally found this book, so I have a frame of reference for both rote memorization and the author's method.

I found the mnemonic devices in this book to be idiotically confusing most of the time. I gave it two stars only because a handful of the idiotic mnemonics led me to simpler ones that I could actually use for the characters I had difficulty with. Only a couple were directly usable.

For instance, to remember "ni", the author has you go through a long, complicated story about capes and interlocking combs and knees. Me, I just looked at the character and it looked like you're looking down at a seated person and their knees are sticking out. Isn't that simpler?

Really, it would be less effort simply to learn the alphabet by rote, and then you'd know it in the correct order as well. I found the ditty for remembering the alphabet order to be a handy crutch, but learning by rote teaches it just as well. I can write the hiragana alphabet table by memory fairly quickly. I doubt anyone who learns hiragana from this book can say the same.

My opinion is: Use this book if you absolutely cannot learn by rote, but otherwise, you're far better off downloading one of the sets of free kana flash cards found on the web and learning by rote. It's cheaper and it's better for you.

Learn your kana.......2006-11-10

I studied Japanese in college about 6-7 years ago, and started taking it again this September. Somehow, I still remembered about 90% of the hiragana and katakana, but I was not confident about the kana that I forgot, so I decided to get this book after reading favorable reviews for it on Amazon.

The traditional way to learn the kana (at least when I was in college) is to learn them in order (a,i,u,e,o,ka,ki,ku, etc.) and simply write each one multiple times. Some people respond to this kind of learning; others don't.

This book takes a different approach and provides imagery in the form of funny or strange sentences about the look of the kana so that it sticks in your memory. The author does *not* draw pictures on top of the kana like some college texts that I've seen; he simply provides weird/funny comments, stories, and/or keywords that comment on the look and sound of the kana, which help the kana "stick" in your mind.

The recommended way to read this book is to start with the hiragana, and learn about 5 per day. Then, after you've mastered the hiragana, move on the katakana section.

The hiragana section was written really well, with the format described above. However, it seems the katakana section was rushed and was not as creative, which is why I give it four stars instead of five.

Overall, I found the book to be very helpful in learning the kana, and would highly recommend it to students of Japanese, both new and old.

Remembering the Kana: A Guide to Reading and Writing the Japanese Syllabaries in 3 Hours Each (Manoa)

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Works... and works well!

Remembering the Kana: A Guide to Reading and Writing the Japanese Syllabaries in 3 Hours Each (Manoa)
James W. Heisig , Helmut Morsbach , and Kazue Kurebayashi
Manufacturer: University of Hawaii Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0824831640

Book Description

Following on the phenomenal success of Remembering the Kanji, the author has prepared a companion volume for learning the Hiragana and Katakana syllabaries of modern Japanese. In six short lessons of about twenty minutes, each of the two systems of "kana" writing are introduced in such a way that the absolute beginner can acquire fluency in writing in a fraction of the time normally devoted to the task.

Using the same basic self-taught method devised for learning the kanji, and in collaboration with Helmut Morsbach and Kazue Kurebayashi, the author breaks the shapes of the two syllabaries into their component parts and draws on what he calls "imaginative memory" to aid the student in reassembling them into images that fix the sound of each particular kana to its writing.. . and have fun in the process.

Customer Reviews:

Works... and works well!.......2007-10-03

Although this is the only tool I've ever used for learning the kana, it definitely worked as advertised. I generally have a pretty weak memory, but the tricks used in this book allowed me to memorize and learn how to write the kana very quickly. Furthermore, because the book does not rely on simple brute-force memorization, I retained the information much better and was able to revisit it again after almost a year of not seeing it in just a few minutes. Finally, the memory techniques themselves have proved to be a valuable asset when memorizing other things.

Although 15$ may seem like a bit of a steep price for such a small volume, it is well worth the cost.

.......2007-09-27

while this is the first and only Kana guide I've ever used, I have to say it is great - simply because it worked.
Some of the mnemonics don't connect well to the corresponding Kana-glyph.
But considering the fact that the mnemonics work so well for the vast majority, what does it hurt to learn a few through rote memorization.

Product Description

Suicide bombers are coming to America's heartland. Their targets: our most precious and vulnerable assets, our children. Following the most terrifying lead of his life, CIA Director Kirk McGarvey traces the threat to a Saudi playboy prince, but the White House wants nothing to do with McGarvey's assumptions. Accusing a Saudi prince of such a heinous plan will surely strain the delicate political balance between the United States and Saudi Arabia. But McGarvey refuses to let politics stand in the way of his investigation, even if it means that the president of the United States will call him a traitor, even if it means he must resign as director of the CIA, and even if it means his meddling will lead to the kidnapping and brutal beating of his own wife. From the deadly, frigid Alaskan waters to the balmy breezes of the French Riviera and finally to the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, D.C., Mac fights through his own nation's restraints to stop suicide bombers willing to martyr themselves for their cause as Soldiers of God.

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