Professionals & Academics Books - Page 5

Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower

Cynthia Cooper

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The longer WorldCom Chief Audit Executive Cynthia Cooper stares at the entries in front of her, the more sinister they seem. But the CFO is badgering her to delay her team's audit of the company's books and directing others to block Cooper's efforts. Still, something in the pit of her stomach tells her to keep digging. Cooper takes readers behind the scenes on a riveting, real-time journey as she and her team work at night and behind closed doors to expose the largest fraud in corporate history. Whom can they trust? Could she lose her job? Should she fear for her physical safety?

In Extraordinary Circumstances, she recounts for the first time her journey from her close family upbringing in a small Mississippi town, to working motherhood and corporate success, to the pressures of becoming a whistleblower, to being named one of Time's 2002 Persons of the Year. She also provides a rare insider's glimpse into the spectacular rise and fall of WorldCom, a telecom titan, the darling of Wall Street, and a Cinderella story for Mississippi.

With remarkable candor, Cooper discusses her struggle to overcome these challenges, and how she has found healing through sharing the lessons learned with the next generation. This book reminds us all that ethical decision-making is not forged at the crossroads of major events but starts in childhood, "decision by decision and brick by brick."

At a time when corporate dishonesty is dominating public attention, Extraordinary Circumstances makes it clear that the tone set at the top is critical to fostering an ethical environment in the work-place. Provocative, moving, and intensely personal, Extraordinary Circumstances is a wake-up call to corporate leaders and an intimate glimpse at a scandal that shook the business world.

Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Ben Carson, Cecil Murphey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 127 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Very Inspiring 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book has not only allow me to change my outlook on life, but I have also developed a more positive attitude towards myself. This is a very inspiring book and I wish there were more books on the market like it. These are the books children should be reading in class to help build their self-esteem.

Gifted Hands 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Amazing, this man knew what he wanted to do at an early age, with his Mother's hard work, he was able to fulfill his dream.

Inspirational, Uplifting a testament to what GOD can do! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is an excellent read for young adults onward. Interwoven in all of Dr. Carson's stories is a testament to what GOD can do. Dr. Carson was child by societal standards was not supposed to succeed. He was raised in a single parent home with a mother who battled mental illness yet he overcame struggles by focusing on what he could do as opposed to what he couldn't do. This book will truly inspire you to be the very best in your God led profession. Awesome!!!

Editorial Review:

This is the mass market edition of the popular book by Dr. Ben Carson whose inspiring story tells of a frustrated inner-city kid whose faith in God helped him become director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University Hospital.

The Warren Buffett Way, Second Edition

Robert G. Hagstrom

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 82 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Buffett is back . . . and better than before!

A decade has passed since the book that introduced the world to Warren Buffett -- The Warren Buffett Way by Robert Hagstrom -- first appeared. That groundbreaking book spent 21 weeks on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Bestseller list and sold over 1 million copies.

Since then, Warren Buffett has solidified his reputation as the greatest investor of all time -- becoming even richer and more successful, despite the wild fluctuation of the markets. How does this value investing legend continue to do it? That's where Robert Hagstrom and the Second Edition of The Warren Buffet Way come in. This edition is a completely revised and updated look at the Oracle of Omaha -- comprising Buffett's numerous investments and accomplishments over the past ten years, as well as the timeless and highly successful investment strategies and techniques he has always used to come out a market winner. This edition is especially accessible as Buffett's basic tenets of investing are presented and illuminated with relevant and up to date examples.

Order your copy today!

The Prince of Frogtown

Rick Bragg

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Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this final volume of the beloved American saga that began with All Over but the Shoutin’ and continued with Ava’s Man, Rick Bragg closes his circle of family stories with an unforgettable tale about fathers and sons inspired by his own relationship with his ten-year-old stepson.

He learns, right from the start, that a man who chases a woman with a child is like a dog who chases a car and wins. He discovers that he is unsuited to fatherhood, unsuited to fathering this boy in particular, a boy who does not know how to throw a punch and doesn’t need to; a boy accustomed to love and affection rather than violence and neglect; in short, a boy wholly unlike the child Rick once was, and who longs for a relationship with Rick that Rick hasn’t the first inkling of how to embark on. With the weight of this new boy tugging at his clothes, Rick sets out to understand his father, his son, and himself.

The Prince of Frogtown documents a mesmerizing journey back in time to the lush Alabama landscape of Rick’s youth, to Jacksonville’s one-hundred-year-old mill, the town’s blight and salvation; and to a troubled, charismatic hustler coming of age in its shadow, Rick’s father, a man bound to bring harm even to those he truly loves. And the book documents the unexpected corollary to it, the marvelous journey of Rick’s later life: a journey into fatherhood, and toward a child for whom he comes to feel a devotion that staggers him. With candor, insight, tremendous humor, and the remarkable gift for descriptive storytelling on which he made his name, Rick Bragg delivers a brilliant and moving rumination on the lives of boys and men, a poignant reflection on what it means to be a father and a son.

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character)

Richard P. Feynman, Ralph Leighton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 231 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A series of anecdotes shouldn't by rights add up to an autobiography, but that's just one of the many pieces of received wisdom that Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman (1918-88) cheerfully ignores in his engagingly eccentric book, a bestseller ever since its initial publication in 1985. Fiercely independent (read the chapter entitled "Judging Books by Their Covers"), intolerant of stupidity even when it comes packaged as high intellectualism (check out "Is Electricity Fire?"), unafraid to offend (see "You Just Ask Them?"), Feynman informs by entertaining. It's possible to enjoy Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman simply as a bunch of hilarious yarns with the smart-alecky author as know-it-all hero. At some point, however, attentive readers realize that underneath all the merriment simmers a running commentary on what constitutes authentic knowledge: learning by understanding, not by rote; refusal to give up on seemingly insoluble problems; and total disrespect for fancy ideas that have no grounding in the real world. Feynman himself had all these qualities in spades, and they come through with vigor and verve in his no-bull prose. No wonder his students--and readers around the world--adored him. --Wendy Smith

Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

Hunter S. Thompson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 69 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Master Work in Political Campaign 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Another classic from HST, in fact maybe my favorite work of his. The setting for the book is the presidential campaign of 1972 pitting Gorge McGovern against Richard Millhouse Nixon. It begins with Thompson being sent by Rolling Stone to be the Washington D.C. correspondent for the magazine. From there the rollercoaster ride begins. HST chronicles the campaign from first, covering the Democratic primaries and running to the nomination of McGovern at the Democratic National Convention, and finally the Presidential election itself.
HST pioneered his own unique style of gonzo journalism and this book, along with the classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, defined him and his craft. Stark in its style and approach, the prospective provided by HST of what it is like to be out there on the campaign trail is unique to my knowledge. A dramatic inside story of the battles of the campaign trail emerges and fills in significant gaps in other press coverage of the time. HST's quest for truth, politics, and the eternal buzz paint a picture that the straight press never could because of restrictions like `objectivity' and the like. The result is perhaps the best account to date on what is really going on behind the scenes of a campaign for the highest office in the land.
The only drawback about reading HST is that it always gives me an incredible urge to drink and act in a semi-crazed style. It is says something about the infectious nature of his work and one often finds oneself wishing there were more gonzo journalists writing today.
This book is essential reading for anyone interested in politics and the machinery behind it. Even if politics aren't your cup up tea, HST brings a new dimension to any subject that he writes about, one that can be appreciated for its raw truth as well as its unconventional delivery. Although HST only provides one way of looking at politics out many possible, readers would be doing a disservice to themselves by passing over this book. Other views are widely espoused by many journalists and pundits, but to my knowledge no one else has tread where HST has dared to go.
This one gets 5 stars for being original, highly entertaining, and remaining relevant to this day.

Editorial Review:

With the same drug-addled alacrity and jaundiced wit that made Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas a hilarious hit, Hunter S. Thompson turns his savage eye and gonzo heart to the repellent and seductive race for President. He deconstructs the 1972 campaigns of idealist George McGovern and political hack Richard Nixon, ending up with a political vision that is eerily prophetic. A classic!

For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War

James M. McPherson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Consider a war in which 25,000 soldiers are killed or wounded in a single battle, as they were at Gettysburg, or 16,000 in a single day, as at Antietam. The degree of suffering and hardship during the American Civil War has been well documented and analyzed in books and films from Margaret Mitchell's fictional Gone with the Wind to Bell Irvin Wiley's classic studies of Civil War soldiers, The Life of Johnny Reb and The Life of Billy Yank. All these sources agree on the brutality of the combat, but what motivated soldiers to continue fighting under such bitter conditions is the cause of some controversy. Until recently, the common stance has been that soldiers enlisted out of economic need and stayed out of loyalty to their comrades. The respected Civil War historian James M. McPherson weighs in with a different point of view in For Cause and Comrades.

Professor McPherson posits that the common rank-and-file soldiers did indeed hold political and ideological beliefs that prodded them to enlist and to fight. His research is based on letters and diaries from 1,076 Union and Confederate soldiers. These reveal many motivations, but always they lead back to duty, honor, and a cause worth dying for. For Cause and Comrades is a fascinating exploration of the 19th-century mind--a mind, it seems, that differs profoundly from our own.

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Dover Thrift Editions)

Benjamin Franklin

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Total reviews: 54 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Franklin's informal account of his remarkable life 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

In many ways, this is, to someone coming to it for the first time, a very surprising book. For one thing, it is amazingly incomplete. Franklin is, of course, one of the most famous Americans who ever lived, and his accomplishments in a wide array of endeavors are a part of American lore and popular history. A great deal of this lore and many of his accomplishments are missing from this account of his life. He never finished the autobiography, earlier in his life because he was too busy with what he terms public "employments," and later in life because the opium he was taking for kidney stones left him unable to concentrate sufficiently. Had Franklin been able to write about every period of his life and all of his achievements, his AUTOBIOGRAPHY would have been one of the most remarkable documents every produced. It is amazingly compelling in its incomplete state.
As a serious reader, I was delighted in the way that Franklin is obsessed with the reading habits of other people. Over and over in the course of his memoir, he remarks that such and such a person was fond of reading, or owned a large number of books, or was a poet or author. Clearly, it is one of the qualities he most admires in others, and one of the qualities in a person that makes him want to know a person. He finds other readers to be kindred souls.

If one is familiar with the Pragmatists, one finds many pragmatist tendencies in Franklin's thought. He is concerned less with ideals than with ideas that work and are functional. For instance, at one point he implies that while his own beliefs lean more towards the deistical, he sees formal religion as playing an important role in life and society, and he goes out of his way to never criticize the faith of another person. His pragmatism comes out also in list of the virtues, which is one of the more famous and striking parts of his book. As is well known, he compiled a list of 13 virtues, which he felt summed up all the virtues taught by all philosophers and religions. But they are practical, not abstract virtues. He states that he wanted to articulate virtues that possessed simple and not complex ideas. Why? The simpler the idea, the easier to apply. And in formulating his list of virtues, he is more concerned with the manner in which these virtues can be actualized in one's life. Franklin has utterly no interest in abstract morality.

One of Franklin's virtues is humility, and his humility comes out in the form of his book. His narrative is exceedingly informal, not merely in the first part, which was ostensibly addressed to his son, but in the later sections (the autobiography was composed upon four separate occasions). The informal nature of the book displays Franklin's intended humility, and for Franklin, seeming to be so is nearly as important as actually being so. For part of the function of the virtues in an individual is not merely to make that particular person virtuous, but to function as an example to others. This notion of his being an example to other people is one of the major themes in his book. His life, he believes, is an exemplary one. And he believes that by sharing the details of his own life, he can serves as a template for other lives.

One striking aspect of his book is what one could almost call Secular Puritanism. Although Franklin was hardly a prude, he was nonetheless very much a child of the Puritans. This is not displayed merely in his promotion of the virtues, but in his abstaining from excessiveness in eating, drinking, conversation, or whatever. Franklin is intensely concerned with self-governance.

I think anyone not having read this before will be surprised at how readable and enjoyable this is. I think also one can only regret that Franklin was not able to write about the entirety of his life. He was a remarkable man with a remarkable story to tell.

Editorial Review:

One of the most popular works of American literature, this charming self-portrait has been translated into nearly every language. It covers Franklin's life up to his prewar stay in London as representative of the Pennsylvania Assembly, including his boyhood years, work as a printer, experiments with electricity, political career, much more.

My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir

Clarence Thomas

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Total reviews: 300 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words.

Thomas was born in rural Georgia on June 23, 1948, into a life marked by poverty and hunger. His parents divorced when Thomas was still a baby, and his father moved north to Philadelphia, leaving his young mother to raise him and his brother and sister on the ten dollars a week she earned as a maid. At age seven, Thomas and his six-year-old brother were sent to live with his mother's father, Myers Anderson, and her stepmother in their Savannah home. It was a move that would forever change Thomas's life.

His grandfather, whom he called "Daddy," was a black man with a strict work ethic, trying to raise a family in the years of Jim Crow. Thomas witnessed his grandparents' steadfastness despite injustices, their hopefulness despite bigotry, and their deep love for their country. His own quiet ambition would propel him to Holy Cross and Yale Law School, and eventually—despite a bitter, highly contested public confirmation—to the highest court in the land. In this candid and deeply moving memoir, a quintessential American tale of hardship and grit, Clarence Thomas recounts his astonishing journey for the first time, and pays homage to the man who made it possible.

Intimately and eloquently, Thomas speaks out, revealing the pieces of his life he holds dear, detailing the suffering and injustices he has overcome, including the acrimonious and polarizing Senate hearing involving a former aide, Anita Hill, and the depression and despair it created in his own life and the lives of those closest to him. My Grandfather's Son is the story of a determined man whose faith, courage, and perseverance inspired him to rise up against all odds and achieve his dreams.

Saddam's Secrets

Georges Hormuz Sada

Amazon Price: $16.49 List Price: $24.99 By: Thomas Nelson Amazon Marketplace: 83 new & used starting at $1.36

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 94 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

eye opening 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Finally, the inside scoop! Questions of WMD answered! Why isn't this information made more readily available to the American People? This is a story of one man's faith and honesty in the worst of situations! You want to know the truth? Read this book!!

sudam's secrets 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I enjoyed the information in the book. Poorly written but never the less informative

Here's the other side of the story 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This is an important book that every American should read. Gen Sada is an amazing man, an eye-witness in Saddam's regime who lived to tell about it and claims to have actually seen WMD with his own eyes. Fascinating!

Excellent Read 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

It's a shame that the public has to dig for the truth rather than rely on the press to be honest, but that's the situation. If you really want to know what was going on rather than buy into the juvenile theory that this was somehow all about W's oil buddies, this is a great start.

saddam's secrets 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Have only read a small amount so far, but already would rate it very good and something all americans should read.

Editorial Review:

General Sada paints a picture of Hussein, his regime-and his country-that is at once personal and truthful, compelling and sobering.