Accounting Books

Who would have thought that "Financial Strategies for Today's Widow" would be a book I'd enjoy reading? I'd picked up a copy for a friend, and - curious - began to page through it... Eminently readable, the book surprised me with its great stories, and excellent advice.

All true, the stories in the book are poignant, eye-opening and presented in such a way that I truly didn't feel as though I was reading a self-help book. And yet all the lessons were clear. I'd imagine that everyone could benefit from reading "Financial Strategies for Today's Widow," but that the women for whom the book is written will especially appreciate it. The key thing is - not only is it important for women to have this information available to them - it has to be readable. And this book is, quite literally, hard to put down. A quality rarely found in arid self-help books these days.

I'd originally intended to give this book to a friend who *is* a widow, but I kept reading - till I'd gone cover to cover. There's so much information in here that I'm keeping it for myself even though I don't fit the title's market. But I do promise to pick up a pristine copy for my friend.

The second hardest day of my life came less than a month ago, when one of the best friends I've ever had --or ever will-- died suddenly at age 34. But the hardest came two days later, when I arrived at his wake and attempted to offer condolences to his widow, a lovely woman whose eyes were now far too aged for a woman of her years.

"What do I do now?" she asked, though I know now she was probably not addressing me. "What can I do now?"

I had no answer to give her. At the time, I believed that perhaps no one did.

But that was before I discovered David Latko's new book, FINANCIAL STRATEGIES FOR TODAY'S WIDOW. It's a book that should be given to every woman, regardless of age or situation, who faces the lose of her spouse.

Latko provides an effective (and better: a workable) life-plan for the modern widow, layout out an easy-to-understand framework on which to build ongoing financial security. But almost as importantly, he does so through the true stories told by women who have experienced the same devastating loss that the intended reader is facing. Seldom have I been so moved by the words of any book-- but never have I been so touched by a book from the financial or self-help genres.

Of particular note was the chapter that told the story of the Mortons. Husband Bill comes to visit Latko shortly after being informed of his impending death. The way the Mortons work through the end-stage planning --both financial and that of personal leave-taking-- is something every married couple should experience.

This is no dry, dogmatic "how-to" advice book. Latko is obviously a skilled storyteller as well as a financial expert who knows his business. And just as obviously, he is a man who cares.

FINANCIAL STRATEGIES FOR TODAY'S WIDOW is the perfect book to give every widow, and every woman-- be it wife, mother or friend. I've just sent my copy to my deceased friend's widow, and I'm ordering another copy today.

--AT, San Francisco

This is a great book if one wants to get a FULL picture at what are the venues available for Financial Planning, what to take and what to leave. Best of all it is laid out in a no-nonsense style in a very lucid style. Highly recommend this book to get a big picture and then use the web to drill down on the areas you want to concentrate and get more info on. Worth its weight in gold.

This book has been invaluable to me. The information that I received in this book, I hadn't heard before. I realize now that what worked for my parents is not going to work for me and that different strategies are going to be necessary in order to achieve a stress free retirement. I am very thankful that this group of practicing Financial Planners took the time to put their thoughts down on paper.

Are you a MBA student? Management scholar? If yes, then this book is definitely for you. The book is not meant for everyday management decision makers because it lacks practical insight. But the theory side is excellent. The author of renown "80/20 principles" has written a good outline of strategic management theories through decades as well as about the latest developments in this area. In the introductory part he gives an overview about overall theoretical background of the subject starting from the teachings of Igor Ansoff. In the first part of the analysis goes mainly around book business unit strategy drawing parallels to BCS-s and Porter's positioning methodology. In the second part the attention is given to various possibilities of corporate strategy. The third part gives an alphabetic overview of all the main strategic thinkers. The fourth part speaks about main concepts, methodologies and techniques used in strategic planning process. The final fifth chapter tries to predict the future of the strategic planning by analysing the latest developments in this area.

After reading Koch's "80/20 Principle", I was convinced that he's a mind of his own. His non-conform thinking and writing is extraordinary. Had I only read this book on Strategy before entering my MBA, business school life would have been much easier. Koch's book on strategy is a foundation book, covering the crucial basics for "understanding" business strategy (roughly 80%). It helps espcially the student of strategy not to get (too) confused by providing basic understanding what business stratetgy is all about. The chapters:

INTRODUCTION Koch states wonderfully the use and abuse of strategy and the swings in strategic thinking.

BUSINESS UNIT STRATEGY A do-it-yourself guide with excellent examples.

CORPORATE STRATEGY Very critical Mr Koch argues about the value creation of corporate strategy.

STRATEGIC THINKERS A guide to some of the most useful and important 40 strategic thinkers and their ideas.

STRATEGIC CONCEPTS, TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES An A-Z glossary. The key words (or rather Consulting & MBA buzzwords)used in the world of strategy.

STRATEGIC SHIFTS IN THE 21 CENTURY Forward lookin Koch claims that the tools of strategy are particular valuable for understanding and exploiting shifts of increasing returns, networks, and the net in our new century.

Prevailing e-commerce and e-business applications are form-based, i.e., the user interaction with the systems is via a set of forms. This book presents a formal yet practical integrated solution to the design, analysis and specification of such applications. The formalism presented in the book draws on intuitive understanding of form-based systems in which the form allows interaction via message passing. The formalism allows abstraction from unnecessary details and focusing on the design and analysis of the business logic and its effect on the form.

On the practical side, the book presents a host of diagrams such as formcharts, page diagrams and screen diagrams to deal with different aspects of form-oriented design. Considering the limitations of diagrams, the authors also present a domain specific language called Dialogue Constraint Language that extends the Object Constraint Language (OCL) to accommodate the specification of dialogues in form-based applications. Relying on such a wealth of modeling artifacts, the book proposes a set of methods for the modeling of the data and communications between the different components of a form-based system.

This is a must have book for the professional analyst, modeler and programmer involved in the design, specification or development of form-based projects. The book provides the methods and the artifacts to better model form-oriented systems.

Kyriakos Anastasakis and Behzad Bordbar

This is a book that has been needed for a long time. There have been studies in the past, indeed a body of knowledge even, on the design of paper based forms. The problem with computer based forms such as those for ordering a book from Amazon is that the forms tend to be generated by programmers, not forms specialists. In fact in this book the examples being used are from a hypothetical on line book store.

At one point the authors are giving an example of a book page of an online bookshop. On it they give an abstract of their own (that is this) book. It reads: "What is the business logic of n enterprise system? How do I specify it in such a way that I know how to transform it into a running system, by skill and by automated tool support? This book gives a self-contained introduction to the modeling and development of business logic for enterprise systems."

In practice, the authors develop a couple of new technologies for the modelling of such forms. Page Diagrams are analagous to flow charts that show what a page does in terms of its interactions. From the home or Welcome page you can go register, go login, look at suggested books, do a search, etc. What links to what? What logic applies (bad password for instance, or is this user logged in). The page diagram is a way for the non-technical manager and the programmer to define exactly what a page or screen is supposed to do. It can become part of the specification that the programmer uses to produce what management wants.

The next concept the authors develop is the Form Storyboard. The storyboard shows pages with respect to the actions they cause in the server.

Other models such as information pages, and data interchange complete the description of the forms related system. For the most part, HTML based web sites are used as examples in this book. But the same kind of modelling is equally applicable to form/database related system such as accounting, payroll or other business applications.

Using the approach developed by these authors is the best way I've seen to document/specify/design a forms based interactive system.

As a portfolio manager with a major NYC investment firm, it was refreshing to see Professor Grant drill down to the core concepts of EVA and its impact on market pricing. Everyone acknowledges that Stern Stewart has pushed EVA thinking forward in the corporate world but Professor Grant takes it further and shows how EVA gets priced into securities on a day-to-day basis.

I took a few courses with Professor Grant at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where this was one of the required texts. I must say his courses and his texts has turned out to be most valuable and useful during my final years as a student of undergraduate finance. All of his texts were reader-friendly and insightful.
Dr. Grant uses active companies in the stock market (GE, Dell, IBM) and their historical data to determine whether they are creating or destroying wealth for their shareholders and bondholders using value-based metrics like eva.
His calculations in this book were especially easy to follow and understand - students of finance can relate with me if you have read some of those cryptic finance texts.
I would highly recommend Dr. Grant's text to all students. And if you are a UMass Boston student, you should take his course.

This is a very helpful little manual. No serious student or derivatives pro should be without it. It covers many of the practically relevant aspects of derivatives pricing in a very original and lucid way, thereby opening new perspectives even for the seasoned pro. I give it to juniors in my team (and should be giving it to many senior colleagues too.).Some of the most outstanding chapters:

- Ten Different Ways to Drive Blach Scholes
- The Most Popular Search Words and Phrases on Wilmott.com
- Paul & Dominics Guide to Getting a Quant Job
- Popular Quant Boos

I am working through my master's degree in Financial Engineering (quantitative track) and this book is almost bar-none one of the best references I have found. It starts out with a FAQ that covers almost all of the important questions such as:

-What are the different types of Mathematics found in Quantitative Finance?
-What is CAPM?
-What is Maximum Likelihood Estimation?
-What is Ito's lemma?
-What are the 'greeks'?
-How robust is the Black-Scholes model?

The answers are short yet at the same time very useful. Each answer has well thought out examples that allow you to get to the core of the topic. At the end of each answer there are references if you want to explore the topic in more detail.

The book then has sections on:

-Most Popular Probability Distributions and Their Uses in Finance
-Ten Different Ways to Derive Black-Scholes
-Models and Equations
-The Black-Scholes formula and the Greeks
-Common Contracts
-Popular Quant Books
-The Most Popular Search Words and Phrases on [...]
-Brainteasers
-Paul & Dominic's Guide to Getting a Quant Job

It is clearly not a text-book, it covers a lot of ground in a little more than 400 pages but it is a useful reference and if you need a review this will fill the purpose. It is definitely not the place to start your learning for that you will need to check out books such as: Neftci's "Principles of Financial Engineering", Hull's "Options, Futures and Other Derivatives" and Shreve's "Stochastic Calculus for Finance" I and II. Once you have started out this can help you fill in holes and figure out where you need to focus on.

I've read a lot of books on personal finance. All tell you you pretty much the same thing (save money, pay bills on time, develop a budget) . The difference between those books and this one is that From Paycheck to Power tells you exactly how to do those things. The authors do an excellent job of making things simple without assuming that the reader is. I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to save more, budget better or just make the most out of their money. It's great!

Budgeting money is not my best quality - something I've had pointed out on numerous occasions by my husband. Knowing this shortcoming, I occasionally browse through books and magazines on finance at the local library. From Paycheck to Power is geared to simple basic control of one's own money, written in an easy to follow format. The authors don't expect you to be a CPA to understand their plans. I've been trying to obtain copies for myself and my children for a year now. Hopefully it will be reprinted soon. In my opinion it's a classic

Written in a precise and coherent manner this book is easy to read and comprehend. The text is extensively cross-referenced with the sources of GAAP. The book is filled with examples of GAAP apllication and will be definitely useful for both practitioners and advanced students of accounting.

This book is necessary for any person who works in the financial industry. It is detailed yet easy to understand. A very helpful reference book.

Gainsharing is a group incentive that ties employee pay to performance. This design manual provides both a comprehensive overview of gainsharing and its benefits and step-by-step instructions on how to design and implement a gainsharing program. The manual includes forms and worksheets. Plus you get useful tools such as "twenty questions to determine if gainsharing is right for your company," "twenty keys to gainsharing success," "six criteria for a good gainsharing formula," and so on. More complete information about the manual and the author's bio/credentials can be found on their website at http://www.jboyett.com.
Note: This review was posted by the authors

Great guide with great sample text for your gainsharing manual. It includes many ideas and concepts that might be overlooked when putting a plan together. It is a quick read that is written in an easy to apply way. I bought two other books on the subject, and this was by far the most practical. The others were very theoretical in nature, and were much longer drawn out texts. I would say this is a must read for anyone looking to put together a gainshare plan.

This is a good book for learning both do it yourself asset allocation and for setting reasonable goals for one's portfolio. Hayden stresses knowing your risk tolerance first rather than looking for returns first. As Will Rogers said: "I'm more concerned with the return of my money than the return on my money."

Vern Hayden, CFP, is a frequent guest on CNBC. Unlike most guests he consistently provides useful down-to-earth advice to viewers. He has come to the realization that blind buy-and-hold investing is no longer a valid approach. He now believes "that radical market fluctuations sometimes demand radical action...there are not only times when you shouldn't buy and hold funds, but also times when you'll need to adjust your allocation." It's refreshing to hear the "truth" about buy and hold from an investment professional rather than get the party line from the always-bullish Wall Street crowd.

Hayden's book, his first, hits the nail on the head and clearly delineates a ten-step investing plan, each of which is explained in a separate chapter. His ten principles include:
- Don't Lose Your Principal
- Set Your Own Benchmark
- Buy and Watch Your Portfolio
- Have an Investing Defense and Offense
- Consider Risk And Return
- Keep Learning
- Avoid Sector Funds
- Track Your Performance
- Be a Professional or Get One

He methodically leads the reader through the key steps needed to become a successful investor. Hayden supplements his advice with appropriate exhibits to emphasis his key points.

In conclusion, Hayden has written a comprehensive, step-by-step investing approach that can greatly benefit serious investors - if they not only read his book but also actually do what he says. Over the past 40 years I've read over 500 books on investing, and this one makes my "top 10" list for its practical advice. I urge you to read this book and benefit from the wisdom of a "true" Wall Street" professional.