Internal Control: A Manager's Journey

Book Description

An entertaining introduction to a very serious and complex issue
Internal control is no longer the exclusive domain of highly trained accountants on the internal auditing staff. Corporate boards, CEOs, and employees at virtually every level are now seen as responsible for designing, implementing, and monitoring these controls; few, however, have the training and background needed to fulfill this complex responsibility.
Through the entertaining story of a manager's visit to the Caribbean, Internal Control: A Manager's Journey illustrates how control can be managed throughout an organization. In each chapter, Operations Manager Bill Reynolds learns the key concepts and techniques of internal control and discovers how to design, document, install, and monitor an innovative, efficient internal control policy. He discovers that effective internal control is based on risk assessment and should encourage innovation. He also learns important techniques for preventing, detecting, and correcting fraud.
This unconventional, extraordinarily useful guide is peppered with practical examples and workable solutions that can be used to institute improved control and accountability in any company of any size. It's the ultimate resource for CEOs, CFOs, operations managers, and anyone involved in the design, implementation, review, or reporting of internal controls.

Customer Reviews:

Plodding, boring, predictable.......2007-01-30

I don't have time to wade through this.... Had to go buy something more suitable.

Disappointing and not focused!.......2006-10-10

I have taken up the book based on the reputation of Mr K.H. Spencer Pickett and was disappointed with the way the book was written.

It feels like reading a textbook where everything is covered with little focus and superficial knowledge is imparted. The only thing that helps is the way the book is written using a story of a manager whose company is in trouble. This helps to reduce the boredom of wondering what the author is trying to tell us.

Many theories are presented but the book lacks examples from real life situations and companies.

Very Good General I/C Coverage.......2003-07-21

This book did an excellent job of covering the entire gamut of internal control from the enviroment to procedure writing. The chapter on concepts of control was particularly well written.

This book definitely prepares you for the next step-writing an I/C policy for your business.

Good book, worth the time and money........2002-04-28

This book will benefit both the new and seasoned professional. Its good for new managers and auditors wanting to get a broad understanding of internal control. The Picketts touch on just about every element of control and give good examples on application. New professionals can use this book as a development tool. I expect they will need to research some of the topics more.

I found the book beneficial because it helped me bring together my understanding of control and the link to our changing business environment. That is, a business environment that wants to balance control with creativity.

I found the writer's style enjoyable and made reading on a dry topic bearable.

Topics covered include: Objectives, Risk, Policy, Internal Control Elements, and how they fit together.

serious but less entertaining.......2002-02-14

Spencer Pickett did an excellent job in explaining internal control. It's a broad introduction covering most aspects of the issue. The business novel style, successfully used by Blanchard, Goldratt, Landsberg etc. starts with a promising, crisp first chapter of 15 easily digestable pages. However, the remaining chapters are chunks of about 50 pages of nearly endless discussions of topics in the context of a dreadlock holiday. It's like half a bottle chilled high quality red wine in the morning. The high quality is in the examples and topics, the less digestable part is the story. On the other hand, without the story, it would be as dull as a Cobit or Basel2 manual.
Fair introduction!

Book Description

A workplace mediation program supplements or replaces institutional grievance processes in order to increase job satisfaction, boost productivity, reduce employee turnover, and decrease the chances of legal action. Weinstein, a social worker and a labor and employment lawyer, provides a powerful administrative, educational, and training tool for human resource professionals, administrators, peer and professional mediators, and students of mediation. Mediated resolutions to conflict in the workplace are designed to last because they seek to address underlying causes and they rely on the participation of the affected parties. Mediation with an impartial third party is more likely to result in a satisfying solution than are decisions imposed upon the parties from outside sources, whether employers or the legal system. Mediators work to strengthen relationships so that future conflicts can be prevented or minimized. This valuable guide to implementing formal mediation programs can be used by both beginning and experienced mediators in all types of organizations- in schools, social service agencies, government agencies, and private industry. Its practical application of mediation theory will benefit students and teachers of mediation, conflict resolution, business management, public administration, law, social work, counseling, and other related disciplines.

Book Description

Advances at the molecular level have enabled scientists to relate the structure of these receptor subunits to their specific mode of action and function, and this in turn is leading the way to exciting new research with important medical consequences for the treatment of disease. The fourteen chapters in this book summarize these advances across a wide range of disciplines.

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Small town Texas in "Where Dreams Die Hard"

Six Men From Now

A friendlier "Friday Night Lights"

Where Dreams Die Hard: A Small American Town And Its Six-man Football Team
Carlton Stowers
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Rural | Sociology | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
General | Football (American) | Sports | Subjects | Books
General | Sports | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0306814978

Book Description

An inspiring story by a two-time Edgar Award-winning writer of how a six-man football team united a school and a town

Down Farm Road 308, an hour's drive south of Dallas, amidst sprawling fields of cotton lies a small community--Penelope, Texas (population 211). Here, where the only thriving businesses are the granary and the post office, unless you count the soft-drink machine in front of the fire station, two-time Edgar Award-winning writer Carlton Stowers discovered a special town that came together, not only to support their six-man highschool football team--the Penelope Wolverines--through thick and a lot of thin, but also, and more importantly, each other.

Where Dreams Die Hard is a warm and revealing portrait of the American heartland--and of one small town's love affair with the team that unites it.

"Through his unforgettable depiction of innocence, goodness, loyalty, and friendship...Carlton Stowers gives us a moving portrait of a community that, in the words of one of the Penelope faithful, is like 'stepping into a Norman Rockwell painting.'" (Billie Letts, author of Where the Heart Is)

"High school football in Texas is both sport and religion, and Stowers brilliantly brings this to light in Where Dreams Die Hard." (Jim Dent, author of The Junction Boys)

Customer Reviews:

Small town Texas in "Where Dreams Die Hard".......2006-07-18

Having chronicled so much disaster, destruction and unspeakable horror committed by people against other people during his extensive writing career, Texas author Carlton Stowers was looking for something simpler in the wake of the 911 tragedy. As he writes in the preface of the non fiction book "Where Dreams Die Hard" on page XIV:

"When a young editor argued that what those of us under her charge had to provide readers was more `red meat,' more hard-hitting, finger-pointing controversy, I rolled my eyes and began considering my leave-taking. Though fully aware that there were endless fakes and frauds needing exposure and countless crimes begging courthouse justice, such tasks no longer interested me. It was time to let someone else try to sort reason from the unreasonable, spend days in the company of devastated victims, and chronicle the social ills for which there seemed no cure."

His quest was for a Norman Rockwall type America if it still existed. Where folks still cared about each other regardless of political or religious affiliation. Where crime was not a problem and where red meat referred to what was on the grill and not something literary.

He found what he was looking for in the small town of Penelope, Texas located about an hour south of Dallas. Penelope has a population of 211 and eagerly and actively supports their six man football team the Penelope Wolverines. As sports fans may know, six man football has seen a revival the last few years in a number of states including Texas. Much of the book covers one season in the life of the town both for the players, their families, and the surrounding community.

While he chronicles the struggles of the 2004 team, author Carlton Stowers does much more than that. Writing about the months before and after the season as well, the town of Penelope and its citizens are brought alive for the reader. Mr. Stowers' folksy style works wonders in this regard as the words flow and skip from point to point much like in regular conversation. Along the way he touches on the history of six mean football, the economy of small town Texas and such basic fundamentals as how to impart responsibility to today's youth among other topics. This is not a lecturing or antiseptic read but more of a good friend talking about life as he sits next to you on your front porch.

The result is an excellent 205 page read that provides a look at basically slightly more than a year in the life of a small Texas town and its citizens. The bad, the good, and everything in between are covered. At the same time it becomes uplifting as one knows no matter how bad the world news gets, folks that live in Penelope, Texas and thousands of other places are taking it one day at a time, prospering in their own way, and helping each other everyday. A little of that attitude goes a long way and Mr. Stowers book is a very refreshing and enjoyable read.

Kevin R. Tipple (copyright) 2006

Six Men From Now.......2006-04-17

What do kids do who want to play football and the town's too small to field a football team in the high school? More importantly, what do their moms and dads do, especially in a state like Texas where everything is football when you're a teenager. He can join the Penelope Wolverines and their brand of rural, thin population "six-man football," designed for school with 99 or fewer students! If you liked FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, you'll appreciate the even bigger sacrifices made by the boys in this book.

Stowers tells the perhaps apochryphal story of a country in west Texas where one man refused to give up his farm and move to the next county, even though a prominent oilman dangled him a job with a salary far beyond anything he would ever be making if he stayed home. The oilman, you seem had designs on the farmer's son. No, not sexual designs, but he figured if he could get that boy enrolled in the high school of his own county, the boy was talented enough to score enough touchdowns to make the difference in the season. But his dad kept saying no, we're staying put. The oilman didn't understand the meaning of the word no and one night, while the family was away, their entire house was moved, lock, stock and housecat, to the oilman's county. The dad figured he might as well join em at this point. Because he would have to pay the cost of airlifting his house back to its original cellar and that he couldn't afford. So the boy joined the high school team and, sure enough, justified the oilman's belief in his nascent talents.

Why, I had never so much as heard of "six-man football" before picking up the latest effort of Carlton Stowers, a true crime expert whose own family was touched by tragedy some mite back.

Now I know plenty. His down home style goes down smoother than a Texas mojito. You'll crack up at another anecdote, in which Penelope plays its rival, Abbott. Now there's a town so proud it has erected a giant billboard with a grinning, full color image of musician Willie Nelson, who they say was born in Abbott. Town pride in Nelson has never diminished, but the fool billboard got too much for the "rebel" singer-songwriter, who one night, got pretty drunk I guess and tried to burn down the darn thing. The billboard remains, half-torched, a visual memory of people's mixed feelings about the little towns from which we fled but to which we return with smiles and tears all mixed up.

A friendlier "Friday Night Lights".......2005-09-05

As the August breezes begin to pick up, the days start to become shorter and thoughts return to fall, the end of the summer season brings about the start of another season, the high school football season.
Thousands of players will have participated in two-a-day practices throughout the dog days of August, all in the hopes of winning games, setting records and pursuing championships.
The only difference between most of the squads competing in the United States and the 112 public high school teams competing throughout Texas, is that they do it a little differently. For those smaller Lone Star Schools, whose student enrollment falls below 100, they play under their own Friday Night lights in the glorious game of six-man football.
Author Carlton Stowers became tired of his own newspaper's front pages, dedicated to the misdoings of others, bombings and mayhem he had seen from a news reporter's eyes. He made the decision to turn his reporter pen and pad towards a quieter town, in a quieter portion of Texas and follow the world of six-man football for a season.
His travels took him to the small town of Penelope and it's populous of 211 residents and the Wolverines six-man football team.
The railroad had left Penelope in 1960 and so went with it the cotton commerce that brought people to it. In 1963 the high school made the decision to abandon its football program. In 1999 a student, Marvin Hill, prodded by his classmates asked the superintendent requesting that football be re-instated in the Wolverines fall season.
The game of six-man football was established in the late 1930's as a sport for the small rural schools. It involves three lineman, three backs and a quarterback. Traditionally it is played on an 80-yard field, 15-yards are needed for a first down, 10-minute quarters are played and all players are eligible to receive a pass. Also included would be a 45-point mercy rule after the first half was complete.
With the help of the superintendent and an open board of education, donations flowed in to field a team that first season. As the interest continued year after year, a playing field, all two-acres of it, was purchased, grass planted and goalposts were acquired when a neighboring school moved up in class, they too were sent to Penelope.
It would be Hill who made history, scoring the first-ever touchdown for the Wolverines that first season.
Fast forward to 2004 when Penelope is led by coach Corey McAdams, the former state championship quarterback and college star at Hardin-Simmons University. It would be his job to bring the Wolverines back on a winning track, turning the tide on the squad's current 1 win, 31 loss record.
Stowers takes the reader onto the practice field, into the hallways of Penelope High and into the homes of the players, their families and their lives.
It is a different type of life in the small towns in Texas, something that many suburban readers may have a hard time comprehending.
When the entire town turns out for a football contest, they may not fill most local high school auditoriums, the coaches drive the bus to away games, that is if his players show up on time after they finish building a sheep fence.
"Where Dreams Die Hard" is not as hard hitting as the best selling "Friday Night Lights", but Stowers stills delves into issues that would make any towns population uneasy. It is the picture that Stowers paints of the small towns in Texas, the wins and the losses by the Penelope High Wolverines squad that make the book so enjoyable.
The length of "Where Dreams Die Hard," is also agreeable to the reader with its 201 pages, fitting for a sport which boasts just 12 players on the gridiron compared to the traditional 22. Stower's work has intrigue, history, heartwarming stories about the players, their families as well as the author's own relationship with his dying father.
While they may host smaller lineups, play in front of smaller crowds, the characters in "Where Dreams Die Hard" are focused on success every Friday evening under the Texas sky, proving that things in Texas are bigger, especially the hearts of those playing six-man football.

Where Dreams Die Hard: A Small American Town and Its Six-Man Football Team

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Where Dreams Die Hard: A Small American Town and Its Six-Man Football Team

Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000I2F78U

Stowers, Carlton. Where dreams die hard; a small American town and its six-man football team.(Young adult review)(Book review): An article from: Kliatt

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Stowers, Carlton. Where dreams die hard; a small American town and its six-man football team.(Young adult review)(Book review): An article from: Kliatt
Avi Kramer
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital
ASIN: B000VN7ISI
Release Date: 2007-09-01

Book Description

This digital document is an article from Kliatt, published by Thomson Gale on May 1, 2007. The length of the article is 549 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Stowers, Carlton. Where dreams die hard; a small American town and its six-man football team.(Young adult review)(Book review)
Author: Avi Kramer
Publication: Kliatt (Magazine/Journal)
Date: May 1, 2007
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 41 Issue: 3 Page: 42(1)

Article Type: Book review, Young adult review

Distributed by Thomson Gale

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Where Dreams Die Hard: A Small American Town And Its Six-Man Football Team
Carlton Stowers
Manufacturer: Da Capo Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OSYHXY

Book Description

With a wide variety of genres, authors, subjects, and styles, The Norton Reader offers the largest and most thoughtfully chosen collection of essays available in one volume. Fifty-four new essays maintain the Reader's long-standing balance of classic and contemporary, canonical and lesser-known selections. The Eleventh Edition also includes important new coverage of visual and spoken texts—over fifty photographs, paintings, drawings, and other images that were originally published with the essays, as well as a new prose form chapter on the spoken word.

Available in this Shorter Edition, with fourteen thematic chapters, The Norton Reader has been carefully designed to support a wide range of teaching styles and situations.

Customer Reviews:

good read........2004-03-01

We've used this in my english class a lot. Someone is selected to analyze an essay, write about its style, content, and other features, and then the student writes down a couple discussion questions and then leads a discussion each friday about the essay. I have found each of the essays informative and educational. Some are rather dry, some are sarcastic, some are flat out funny. There are essays of length (10+ pages) and then some that cover only a few pages. The essays cover such subtopics as patriotism, nature, education, politics, and forms of writing. Combining all of these essays together into one book leads to a great read that, finding a way to suit anyone's interests.

Fabulous Stories.......2002-12-02

College English text yes, but contains a huge variety of stories from notable writers. Short stories yes, but great for those who don't want to delve into full-length novels. Also contains questions to think about after many of the essays and mini biographies of the authors.

Its a school book.......2002-06-27

I bought this book for a college class and the next semester they changed the book. I read some things on my own and found some good but I don't think it was worth the money. I still have it though because when I read it, it makes me feel smart. Plus they come out with new ones all the time...dont buy it new. Just get a used one. All they change is the cover and a couple inserts so the pages are different and you think its different than the old one. Dont be fooled.

Even A Liberal Can Write A Good Essay.......2002-01-15

Although the editorial selection clearly slants to the left, and is bubbling with postmodernism, many of the essays here are quite enjoyable, especially the humorous prose of James Thurber and Mark Twain, and George Orwell's "Politics and the English Lanuage" is delightfully informative. The best expositionary anthology I've yet seen.

This is far more than a textbook.......2001-05-22

The editors of this edition are to be commended. The essays they have collected are a broad cross spectrum of mostly American writings. The subject matter, approach and style of the essays assures that anyone who reads them will find more than a little to capture the imagination and stimulate thinking. Instructors who are used to a follow-the-arrows type of reading/writing text may not enjoy this work. There is very little intrusion on the part of the editors. They do not give step-by-step instructions for the use of the essays. Each work is followed by a few questions that may be used in a classroom setting and only one suggestion for writing based on the essay read. However, for instructors who have built their own courses in reading-based composition, this edition offers an embarrassment of riches to choose from. The text does not "guide" the reader into thinking about an essay according to a preconceived plan. Because the student approaches the essays without coaching (except for what a classroom instructor might give), the ensuing class discussion and the writing that is generated is far more "genuine" than with many other texts. Actually, calling this a textbook may be a mistake. I have lent my copy to many people who are not in college, and they have enjoyed the selections sufficiently to buy their own copies.

The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction

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The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction
Linda H.; Brereton, John C.; Hartman, Joan Peterson
Manufacturer: W W Norton & Co Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000SSR1LU

The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction Prose Tenth Edition

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The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction Prose Tenth Edition
Jerome Beaty
Manufacturer: W W Norton & Co Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000J4UDN6

The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction, Shorter Eleventh Edition

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The Norton Reader: An Anthology of Nonfiction, Shorter Eleventh Edition
Linda H. Peterson John C. Brereton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company 2003
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000MCJIWC

Book Description

Inspiration drawn from letters, journals, historical sources, and—essential vehicles of women's storytelling through the years—quilts fills this narrative re-creation of the history of the West from the time of the early pioneers to the present day. The purpose of quilts and the art of quilting provide a window into the lives of these women, their friendships, and their sorrows. Quilts provided warmth and occasionally served as death shrouds during the gold rush years. They were nailed to the walls and floors of rough-hewn cabins of shanty mining settlements. Quilting bees provided a rare opportunity for female fellowship at the turn of the century. The voice of a masterful storyteller brings to life the heroic and heartbreaking stories of generations of women in this sensitive and artistic portrait.

Customer Reviews:

The Quilt That Walked to Golden:Women and Quilts in the Mountain West--From the Overland Trail to Contemporary Colorado.......2007-08-17

Lovely looking book for your coffee table or your sewing library. The cover gets you 'in' and there it keeps you. Good quality illustrations and photos. Makes me feel all red, white and blue and I am an Australian. I love American history and this book did not disappoint me. It was a great thrill to see photos of quilts with their actual makers. As a fellow patchwork and quilter I enjoyed it from cover to cover.

The Quilt that walked to Golden.......2006-11-10

Excellent book, lots of pictures and interesting human interest stories

Very interesting and great photos.......2006-08-30

This book was recommended to me by Amazon since I buy a lot of quilting books and it's really terrific! The stories are fascinating and the photos really make the book. It is a BIG heavy book, though, but it's definitely worth it!

Excellent history and quilter's resource.......2006-02-25

My wife is an enthusiastic quilter and I bought her this book as a gift. It's full of historical detail, anecdotes, and quilting trivia. It's a very satisfying book, with great photos, quilt patterns, and lots of detail. I recommend it highly.

A Quilt Book to accompany a quilt.......2005-10-19

Our library has a quilt auction each year and includes a quilt book with each quilt. I chose this book because of its Colorado history to accompany my quilt. I loved the historical theme.

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