General Books - Page 4

Transparency: How Leaders Create a Culture of Candor (J-B Warren Bennis Series)

Warren Bennis, Daniel Goleman, James O'Toole

Amazon Price: $15.61 List Price: $22.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Jossey-Bass Amazon Marketplace: 61 new & used starting at $10.15

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Management & Leadership -> Leadership

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In Transparency, the authors–a powerhouse trio in the field of leadership–look at what conspires against "a culture of candor" in organizations to create disastrous results, and suggest ways that leaders can achieve healthy and honest openness. They explore the lightning-rod concept of "transparency"–which has fast become the buzzword not only in business and corporate settings but in government and the social sector as well.

Together Bennis, Goleman, and O'Toole explore why the containment of truth is the dearest held value of far too many organizations and suggest practical ways that organizations, their leaders, their members, and their boards can achieve openness. After years of dedicating themselves to research and theory, at first separately, and now jointly, these three leadership giants reveal the multifaceted importance of candor and show what promotes transparency and what hinders it. They describe how leaders often stymie the flow of information and the structural impediments that keep information from getting where it needs to go. This vital resource is written for any organization–business, government, and nonprofit–that must achieve a culture of candor, truth, and transparency.

iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business

Jeffrey S. Young, William L. Simon

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 In stock soon. Order now to get in line. First come, first served. By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 64 new & used starting at $1.62

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Professionals & Academics -> Business
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 69 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

iCon takes a look at the most astounding figure in a business era noted for its mavericks, oddballs, and iconoclasts. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Jeffrey Young and William Simon provide new perspectives on the legendary creation of Apple, detail Jobs’s meteoric rise, and the devastating plunge that left him not only out of Apple, but out of the computer-making business entirely. This unflinching and completely unauthorized portrait reveals both sides of Jobs’s role in the remarkable rise of the Pixar animation studio, also re-creates the acrimony between Jobs and Disney’s Michael Eisner, and examines Jobs’s dramatic his rise from the ashes with his recapture of Apple. The authors examine the takeover and Jobs’s reinvention of the company with the popular iMac and his transformation of the industry with the revolutionary iPod. iCon is must reading for anyone who wants to understand how the modern digital age has been formed, shaped, and refined by the most influential figure of the age–a master of three industries: movies, music, and computers.

The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy

Sasha Issenberg

Amazon Price: $18.98 List Price: $26.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Gotham Amazon Marketplace: 76 new & used starting at $1.44

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> International
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

From the sea to your plate, the first international tour of sushi’s journey in the global marketplace

One generation ago, sushi’s narrow reach ensured that sports fishermen who caught tuna in most of the world sold the meat for pennies as cat food. Today, the fatty cuts of tuna known as toro are among the planet’s most coveted luxury foods, worth hundreds of dollars a pound and capable of losing value more quickly than any other product on earth. So how has one of the world’s most popular foods gone from being practically unknown in the U.S. to being served in towns all across America, and in such a short span of time? Sushi aficionados and newcomers alike will be surprised to learn the true history, intricate business, and international allure behind this fascinating food.

A riveting combination of culinary biography, behind-the-scenes restaurant detail, and a unique exploration of globalization’s dynamics, journalist Sasha Issenberg traces sushi’s journey from Japanese street snack to global delicacy. THE SUSHI ECONOMY takes you through the stalls of Tokyo’s massive Tsukiji market, where the auctioneers sell millions of dollars of fish each day, and to the birthplace of modern sushi--in Canada. He then follows sushi’s evolution in America, exploring how it became LA’s favorite food. You’re taken behind the sushi bar with the chef Nobu Matsuhisa, whose distinctive travels helped to define the flavors of global sushi cuisine, and with a unique sushi chef blazing a path in Texas. Issenberg also delves into the complex economics of the fish trade, following the ups and downs of the hunt for bluefin off New England, the tuna cowboys on the southern coast of Australia who invented the art of tuna ranching, and uncovering the mysterious underworld of pirates, smugglers, and the tuna black market.

Few businesses reveal the complex dynamics of globalization as acutely as the tuna’s journey from the sea to the sushi bar. After traversing the pages of THE SUSHI ECONOMY, you’ll never see the food on your plate — or the world around you — quite the same way again.

The Corporate Records Handbook: Meetings, Minutes & Resolutions(3rd Edition)

Anthony Mancuso

List Price: $69.99 By: NOLO Amazon Marketplace: 13 new & used starting at $22.75

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

All the forms you need to keep your corporation valid in the eyes of the IRS and courts.

If you've taken the time to turn your business into a corporation, chances are you'd like to see it stay that way. Your business card may say "incorporated," but if the courts and the IRS think differently, it's closing time.

Because meeting minutes are the primary paper trail of a corporation's legal life, it's important to know when and how to prepare these minutes. The Corporate Records Handbook provides all the forms (plus instructions) you need, including:

Call of Meeting

Meeting Participant List

Notice of Meeting

Certification of Mailing

Acknowledgment of Receipt of Notice of Meeting

Shareholder Proxy

Meeting Summary Sheet

Minutes of Annual Shareholders' Meeting

Minutes of Special Shareholders' Meeting

Minutes of Annual Directors' Meeting

Minutes of Special Directors' Meeting

Waiver of Notice of Meeting

Approval of Corporate Minutes By Directors of Shareholders

Cover Letter for Approval of Minutes of Paper Meeting

Written Consent to Action Without Meeting

The Corporate Records Handbook also gives you more than 75 additional resolutions -- both as tear-outs and on CD-ROM -- to insert into your minutes. So take a few minutes and read this book -- your corporation deserves it!

The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea

Steve LeVine

Amazon Price: $18.45 List Price: $27.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Random House Amazon Marketplace: 36 new & used starting at $16.92

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Remote, forbidding, and volatile, the Caspian Sea long tantalized the world with its vast oil reserves. But outsiders, blocked by the closed Soviet system, couldn’t get to it. Then the Soviet Union collapsed, and a wholesale rush into the region erupted. Along with oilmen, representatives of the world’s leading nations flocked to the Caspian for a share of the thirty billion barrels of proven oil reserves at stake, and a tense geopolitical struggle began. The main players were Moscow and Washington–the former seeking to retain control of its satellite states, and the latter intent on dislodging Russia to the benefit of the West.
The Oil and the Glory is the gripping account of this latest phase in the epochal struggle for control of the earth’s “black gold.” Steve LeVine, who was based in the region for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Newsweek, weaves an astonishing tale of high-stakes political gamesmanship, greed, and scandal, set in one of the most opaque corners of the world. In LeVine’s telling, the world’s energy giants jockey for position in the rich Kazakh and Azeri oilfields, while superpowers seek to gain a strategic foothold in the region and to keep each other in check. At the heart of the story is the contest to build and operate energy pipelines out of the landlocked region, the key to controlling the Caspian and its oil. The oil pipeline that resulted, the longest in the world, is among Washington’s greatest foreign policy triumphs in at least a decade and a half.
Along the way, LeVine introduces such players as James Giffen, an American moneyman who was also the political “fixer” for oil companies eager to do business on the Caspian and the broker for Kazakhstan’s president and ministers; John Deuss, the flamboyant Dutch oil trader who won big but lost even bigger; Heydar Aliyev, the oft-misunderstood Azeri president who transcended his past as a Soviet Politburo member and masterminded a scheme to loosen Russian control over its former colonies in the Caspian region; and all manner of rogues, adventurers, and others drawn by the irresistible pull of untold riches and the possible “final frontier” of the fossil-fuel era. The broader story is of the geopolitical questions of the Caspian oil bonanza, such as whether Russia can be a trusted ally and trading partner with the West, and what Washington’s entry into this important but chaotic region will mean for its long-term stability.
In an intense and suspenseful narrative, The Oil and the Glory is the definitive chronicle of events that are understood by few, but whose political and economic impact will be both profound and lasting.

"The collapse of the Soviet Union was a big opportunity for Big Oil, whose exploits are detailed in this fast-paced work of political and economic reportage by Wall Street Journal energy correspondent LeVine.
Westerners had been sniffing for black gold in Russia and its satellites long before the empire disintegrated, notes the author. Averell Harriman, “the Harvard-trained scion of nineteenth-century robber baron Edward Harriman,” tried his hand at the business before turning to manganese mining, while Armand Hammer “became a money launderer for the Bolsheviks, sneaked cash to secret Bolshevik agents in the United States, and profited handsomely as the representative in Russia of some thirty American companies.” Hammer set the tone for the Americans who flocked to the Caspian in the first years of the Clinton presidency, which maneuvered for the construction of an east-west oil pipeline that, by reversing the old pattern of Central Asian materials going north to Russia and coming back as products for sale, “would favor the West and disfavor Russia.” Not a nice way to treat a fledgling democracy, but the oil scouts, of course, considered Russia a rival for Central-Asian resources second only to Iran, with its heartfelt and long-standing enmity toward the United States in the region and abroad. These scouts–the first among equals being LeVine’s heart-of-darkness antihero, Jim Giffen–kept their distance when Russia still had control over the area, spurning a Gorbachev-era program to allow foreign co-ownership. But they rushed to support separatist movements and encouraged ethnic and political divisions that opened the door to an even bigger share of the wealth. The tale of Giffen’s rise and fall (the latter for perhaps surprising reasons) occupies much of the later pages, but he never loses sight of the bigger picture: namely, Central Asia as oil lamp and potential powder keg in the realpolitik of the next few years.
A complex story rendered comprehensible, with much drama and intrigue."--KIRKUS

Sales and Service for the Wine Professional

Brian Julyan

List Price: $31.99 By: Cengage Learning Business Press Amazon Marketplace: 8 new & used starting at $32.29

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Job Hunting & Careers -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Job Hunting & Careers -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Hospitality, Travel & Tourism

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

enthusiast's dream 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I was first introduced to Mr. Julyan's exciting syllabus through the Court of Master Sommelier's examination process. As both a student of wine and an educator in the hospitality sect, I have found his brief yet thorough writing to be an indispensable reference guide when educating my colleagues at both of my establishments.

For the home enthusiast or even someone just curious about broadening their horizons into a larger world of viticulture and enology, Mr. Julyan's writing broaches the sometimes forboding subject of the old world in an extremely approachable manner, the new world with a sense of excitement and the realms of bartending with both sensetivity toward tradition and the modern mixologist.

For the wine-savvy diner, this book provides valuable insight into the realm of "what should be going on" in the parts of the restaurant world you don't get to see. As a 20 year restaurant veteran, I also greatly appreciated Mr. Julyan's explainations of the difference between the should be's of service versus the nescessary practicality of providing service within the specific constraints of each establishment's environment and ability.

Both an exceptional value and a more approachable read than the sometimes overtly technical wine tomes available, I strongly recommend this to anyone looking to increase the caliber of thier sales and service training in their hospitality career or to soak in a little more than just grape-juice!

Editorial Review:

Providing in-depth coverage of the wine industry and comprehensive self-assessment material, Sales and Service for the Wine Professional is an indispensable one-stop resource for sommeliers, hospitality managers, food and beverage managers, trainers and students. With detailed treatment of recently emerged regions and a continued emphasis on the importance of service, this new, fully international edition offers ideal support for students and trainees on higher educational, vocational and professional courses.

Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients

Ray Moynihan, Alan Cassels

Amazon Price: $10.85 List Price: $15.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Nation Books Amazon Marketplace: 49 new & used starting at $7.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Biography & History -> Company Profiles
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Industrial Relations
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Thirty years ago, Henry Gadsden, the head of Merck, one of the world's largest drug companies, told Fortune magazine that he wanted Merck to be more like chewing gum maker Wrigley's. It had long been his dream to make drugs for healthy people so that Merck could "sell to everyone." Gadsden's dream now drives the marketing machinery of the most profitable industry on earth. Drug companies are systematically working to widen the very boundaries that define illness, and the markets for medication grow ever larger. Mild problems are redefined as serious illness and common complaints are labeled as medical conditions requiring drug treatments. Runny noses are now allergic rhinitis, PMS has become a psychiatric disorder, and hyperactive children have ADD. When it comes to conditions like high cholesterol or low bone density, being "at risk" is sold as a disease. Selling Sickness reveals how widening the boundaries of illness and lowering the threshold for treatments is creating millions of new patients and billions in new profits, in turn threatening to bankrupt health-care systems all over the world. As more and more of ordinary life becomes medicalized, the industry moves ever closer to Gadsden's dream: "selling to everyone."

Changing the Game: How Video Games Are Transforming the Future of Business

David Edery, Ethan Mollick

Amazon Price: $16.49 List Price: $24.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: FT Press Amazon Marketplace: 39 new & used starting at $9.00

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> High-Tech
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"Executives who still insist on all work and no game play won't just be running dull workplaces; they will also be running less profitable ones too." --The Economist on Changing the Game "Video games are now far from a mere diversion to kill time being amused. This book amply illustrates how we can get mental, social, and business benefits from new ways to play." --Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts, The 3DO Company, and Digital Chocolate "Mollick and Edery have provided leading-edge analysis of the interaction between gamers, hackers, and the world of business. A must-read for anyone in the gaming business, those considering entering it, and those who want to understand what games have to teach us about engagement, learning, and innovation." --Karim Lakhani, Assistant Professor and Richard Hodgson Fellow at Harvard Business School, Faculty Fellow at the Berkman Center of Harvard Law School "Changing the Game is a fun read, but more than that, it gives HR professionals like myself the tools to understand how to recruit, train, and retain a new generation of workers using a wide range of new techniques drawn from the world of video games."--Lindsay Nadler, Director, Human Resources, Miramax Films "You will be more 'ready to play' after you read this game-changing book, which explores how computer and video games are transforming business and marketing practices. David Edery and Ethan Mollick offer a far-reaching and richly detailed account which touches on everything from product placements and advergaming to the use of games for corporate training and harvesting user innovation." --Henry Jenkins, Codirector of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program, author ofConvergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide Use Video Games to Drive Innovation, Customer Engagement, Productivity, and Profit! Companies of all shapes and sizes have begun to use games to revolutionize the way they interact with customers and employees, becoming more competitive and more profitable as a result. Microsoft has used games to painlessly and cost-effectively quadruple voluntary employee participation in important tasks. Medical schools have used game-like simulators to train surgeons, reducing their error rate in practice by a factor of six. A recruiting game developed by the U.S. Army, for just 0.25% of the Army's total advertising budget, has had more impact on new recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined. And Google is using video games to turn its visitors into a giant, voluntary labor force--encouraging them to manually label the millions of images found on the Web that Google's computers cannot identify on their own. Changing the Game reveals how leading-edge organizations are using video games to reach new customers more cost-effectively; to build brands; to recruit, develop, and retain great employees; to drive more effective experimentation and innovation; to supercharge productivity!in short, to make it fun to do business. This book is packed with case studies, best practices, and pitfalls to avoid. It is essential reading for any forward-thinking executive, marketer, strategist, and entrepreneur, as well as anyone interested in video games in general.* In-game advertising, advergames, adverworlds, and beyond Choose your best marketing opportunities--and avoid the pitfalls *Use gaming to recruit and develop better employees Learn practical lessons from America's Army and other innovative case studies *Channel the passion of your user communities Help your customers improve your products and services--and have fun doing it *What gamers do better than computers, scientists, or governments Use games to solve problems that can't be solved any other way

Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis

Harold L. Vogel

Amazon Price: $42.74 List Price: $57.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Cambridge University Press Amazon Marketplace: 35 new & used starting at $33.98

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Insightful! 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 8 people found this review helpful.

Author and entertainment industry analyst Harold L. Vogel sheds valuable light on the growing importance of fun in the American economy. His book shows surprising versatility, sometimes reading like an economics textbook, and other times providing an engaging and easily readable overview of the entertainment business. Vogel provides exhaustive sources and an authoritative perspective, linking the entertainment industry's technology-driven increase in productivity to the public's increased expenditures on music, movies, sports, games, theme parks and other forms of entertainment. The relatively modest attention he pays to the performing arts reflects their unfortunate status as a poor stepchild we find this book's breadth and depth impressive, and strongly recommends it to analysts, scholars and students who seek a clear picture of the economic role of entertainment.

Editorial Review:

In this newly revised book, Harold L. Vogel examines the business economics of the major entertainment enterprises: movies, music, television programming, broadcasting, cable, casino gambling and wagering, publishing, performing arts, sports, theme parks, and toys and games. The seventh edition has been further revised and broadened and differs from its predecessors by restructuring and repositioning the previous Internet chapter, including new material on the economics of networks and advertising, adding a new section on policy implications, and further expanding the section on recent theoretical work pertaining to box-office behaviour. The result is a comprehensive up-to-date reference guide on the economics, financing, production, and marketing of entertainment in the United States and overseas. Investors, business executives, accountants, lawyers, arts administrators, and general readers will find that the book offers an invaluable guide to how entertainment industries operate.

Form Your Own Limited Liability Company (book with CD-Rom)

Anthony Mancuso

Amazon Price: $29.69 List Price: $44.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: NOLO Amazon Marketplace: 38 new & used starting at $27.88

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> General AAS
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Small Business & Entrepreneurship -> Entrepreneurship

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Lot of Information about this new Business Model 5 out of 5 stars.
20 of 23 people found this review helpful.

A limited liability company is a relatively recent addition to the traditional forms of companies. It has some fo the advantages of a corporation, and the tax advantages of a partnership, sole proprietorship or corporation depending on the desires of the owners. It is not suitable for all organizations, but if you are considering one, here is the place to start.

If you go to an attorney to get him to set up an limited liability corporation, he will ask you a bunch of questions, write down the answers and get his secretary or paralegal to type these answers into their standard LLC form on their word processor. She will then press the print button and you get billed for a thousand dollars or so.

Anthony Mancuso is a corporations attorney licensed to practice law in California. He decided to take his standard corporate form and put it out in the form of a book. In the book he will ask you a bunch of questions, taking the time to point out the alternatives (that a lawyer probably doesn't do unless asked. You then take his standard corporation form (supplied on a CD) and fill in the answers. Files these with the appropriate offices and you have a corporation for only the filing fees the state charges.

Well, maybe it's not quite that easy. The LLC is a new form of business. I'd suggest that you read and consider the forms contained here, but then I'd have an attorney in your state review them, just to be sure.

Editorial Review:

Everything you need to form your own LLC!

Limited liability companies provide the most flexible way of doing business: You get both the tax benefits of a partnership, and the personal protection from business debts provided to corporations.

Form Your Own Limited Liability Company provides you with the step-by-step instructions and forms you need to form an LLC in your state, without the expense of hiring a lawyer. This bestseller covers how to:

choose an LLC name

prepare and file articles of organization

decide on the best management structure

create an operating agreement

take care of ongoing legal and tax paperwork

The 5th edition has been carefully revised and updated to reflect the latest federal regulations, as well as the most current laws of all 50 states. All the forms you need are included on a CD-ROM.