Practitioners Books

I think this book is well written and gives good explanations of the complicated astrology/numerology aspects of Feng Shui. But part of it seems to contradict Ms. Too's earlier book, The Complete Illustrated Guide to Feng Shui (1996). In that one, the facing direction of the back door determines good and bad areas (the eight locations). A house with back door facing NW is a West-group Chien house with its good and bad areas matching those of West-group people. But in this newer book the facing direction of the front door is used and a SE-facing house is labelled "West-group" but its good and bad areas match those of East-group people (see page 184). I feel very frustrated because I thought I understood this -- but now, not. I wonder if it's a mistake, because I've found mistakes in other books by this author, specifically in the drawings and diagrams. In The Complete Illustrated guide, I think the diagram on page 96 has mixed up "good" and "bad" locations, they conflict with the text. In Smart Feng Shui for the Home, the East trigram on yang pa kua is wrong (page 31). In the new book Flying Star Feng Shui for Period 8, the mountain and water star numbers are switched in the NW sector (page 67). The books are fascinating to me and have lots of information. I feel they need to be more careful in the proofreading stage.

I admire Lillian Too's writing skills and I'm glad she finnaly starts writing the more serious feng shui stuff.

I have great interest in learning classical feng shui and I have collected the works of other well known and authoritative classical feng shui teachers. But most these books are advanced and may too complicated for a beginner. Ms Lillian Too has been able to borrow and extract the formulae out of these authors and cleverly rearranged them in her own abridged style.

A good book must always have an acknowledgement of the author's original source of reference. Unfortunately, Ms Lillian Too has not shared with us her sources of reference and has not given due credit to those authors from which her information for this book is derived. I'm sure there are many eager learners like me out there who would like to for more substance by buying not just her books but also others who created the originals.

I disagree with most of the reviews here. I am a huge fan of Ms. Too's and have no doubt this author knows her stuff! (by the way she graduated from Harvard Business school - very smart lady) This book is perfect for those interested in extending their skill levels in flying star feng shui. I found it most helpful and saw no contradictions from previous books. I would caution those without a good grasp of basic flying star or compass school feng shui not to purchase this book until they are "ready". It can be confusing for those who haven't studied this science extensively.

Not quite what I have expected. She should stick to what she writes best - all about superstitions and buying feng shui stuffs. Classical feng shui are for the classical feng shui writers. Would rather read Eva Wong's books. I think she got most of the originals from other classical feng shui writers. It's disgraceful!

For those who are used to Lillian Toos Feng Shui books, this will come as something as a shock. With great respect to Lillian, her books to date are very "pop culture" just dusting the top of the simplest Feng Shui for the mass market.

This is vastly different and shows she really does know her stuff! In depth detail of Flying Star and Eight Mansions with details on loss lines, Castle Gates, the Luo Pan rings and more. However, this would be for the more advanced reader as it really assumes you are familiar with the concepts of qi, five elements etc.

I am not an expert, but it is definitely what is known as "Classical Feng Shui". I can't vouch for her interpretation of Flying Star, but I am happy to add it to my collection!

Zero-. Author is more concerned of protecting his macros and VBA modules then to give real knowledge to the readers. So the rest of his books flooding the market, instead of just One but really good.

if you actually install the files, instead of running them off of the write-protected CD-ROM, you can edit them.

It seems as if I'm the pariah -- given the lukewarm nature of the preceeding reviews -- but, not afraid to sound contrarian, I unreservedly give this book five stars.

I believe "Mastering Financial Modelling" is not only one of the best books on the subject, but it is simple to read and understand, and convinces the reader that creating your own financial models is a lot of fun. I'm not sure you can acquire the same sense of satisfaction after reading its competition.

If you aren't sure about this book's utility as regards your immediate needs, feel free to visit www.financial-models.com, which gives a superficial representation of what you'll find in the book.

PS: I owned Benninga's "Financial Modelling" for about 4 years, before I sold it so that I could buy Day's book. Benninga's book is good for finance formulars and so on, but Day goes a step farther and gives you real models with the formulars and explains in greater detail how things like Combo Boxes work and so forth.

The only quirk with this book is that it does not come with a CD-Rom as promised on the website. I was pretty upset at first and e-mailed the author about it. But he quickly referred me to the Financial Times website, where I was able to obtain free downloads. If you own a MAC the files might not work for you. Nonetheless, I believe this is a relatively minor distraction in an otherwise fantastically put together piece of work.

Some good ideas about applying Microsoft Excel are included in book and the accompanying CD-ROM. But unfortunately the included models are not practical for most American readers. They use English nomenclature - NPAT instead of Net Income, etc. - and have formatting that looks ok on screen but is less than presentation quality when printed.

The author has password protected the spreadsheets so you can't customize them to your own needs. A serious drawback for the serious user, clearly the intended readership for this book.

Even if you copy the templates to your hard drive, you CANNOT customise the many password-protected spreadsheet templates included on the CD.

Even more disappointingly, the password prevents you from using Excel's audit function to trace formulae components.

This means that to understand formulae one must resort to the tedious, stone-age method of looking in the formula bar and noting down by hand that the formula is, for example," = (sum (A6:G12)) * [next sheet!]Q7 + ([sheet 7!]T78 / [sheet 3!] c24)", and then translating it all into English.

In summary, if you want to teach yourself from this book it will cost you a very substantial time investment in addition to the book's cover price.

For someone who is a specialist in message design she sure had a time delivering hers. Long lengthy and way too technical. This book would be more suited for someone who doesn't mind a dry read or jargon.

In fairness to the author, she is very clear in her preface who her target audience is: people working in the field of public relations or marketing who got there without formal training or education in the theory and practice of campaign management. The book serves that population very well. It provides a thorough and comprehensive, if academic, analysis of all the stages in creating and managing a campaign, and provides a solid foundation in the core building blocks of the discipline.

If, however, like me you are looking for a book that will provide hands-on, tactical advice on developing a communications campaign in a hurry and on a shoestring budget, you won't find much help here. I'm on my local school board, trying to develop a communications strategy to elicit community support for a large high school renovation project. Unfortunately, I found little in this book that I could translate into immediate strategy and tactics. I have a better understanding of the appropriate terminology used by campaign professionals, but I'm not any closer to putting a campaign - even an amateur one - of my own together.

Those looking for a deeper, theoretical grounding in campaign management should find this book worthwhile. Those looking for tactical, hands-on advice should keep looking.

In a work that will make public relations practitioners everywhere scream, "Why didn't I think of that," Dr. Moffitt applies a common sense approach to tackling campaign design and execution. Influenced by James Grunig, this book reaches conclusions that seem at first, too simple to true. However, through Moffitt's discussion, she explains the complex reasoning behind her solutions.

The book contains a fair amount of theory, a critical component of any serious discussion on campaign design. The theory, including the collapse model, the conceptualization model, and cognitive dissonance, forms the foundation of the campaign. If properly read and studied, this book will leave readers feeling confident in their campaign design and eager to meet the challenges of campaign execution.

5 stars for its clarity and for giving the subject due consideration, instead of trying to gloss over the subject with catch phrases and anecdotes.

Now I am waiting for Moffitt's next work, Communication Theories for Everyday Life with John R. Baldwin and Stephen D. Perry.

In designing her message Moffitt lost my attention. This book is not only way too theoretical and impractical, worst of all it is absolutely boring. A nightmare to read. If you're looking for practical advice, look somewhere else.

I had this book in one of my classes in college and I believe that I learned the most from this book than any other class and/or book. Dr Moffitt has a very unique way of presenting ideas and cases. Dr. Moffit was my teacher actually and she did a very good job of presenting the information in such a way as to make you think about it in different ways before answering.

Easy to read, easy to understand, exellant Scanning tips sections and very useful summary boxes. Ultrasound images quality is somewhat poor. I strongly recommend it for beginners also very useful for amateurs in sonography.
Ahmad Shafi.

The US pictures are very small and the quality of the images are very poor. If you are looking for a really good book for RDMS review for Abdomen...try Exam prep for Diagnostic US (abdomen and obgyn) by Sanders,Dolk and Miner. I also recommend Abdominal Sonography (Q&A)Review by Cindy Owen.

This is the first book in my life with so many errors. And the quality of picturs are not good, they are too small and not instructive. Information is not comprehensive in many cases.

This is a great book!! :)! It's easy to read and very informative. I first saw this book at my internship site and looked through it. I read a definition of something that I couldnt find anywhere else in my books. That's how I knew I had to own this book.

This is a must have for every Nurse Practitioner and PA on the planet...Don't go to work without it..

Common sense advice in a small paperback book, not worth the money.

This book is only 80 pages and offers suggestions about avoiding malpractice using 20 briefly described cases for purposes of illustration.This book is fairly elementary and offers little unique insight.For such a book I found the cost listed on the book($35.00)incredibly high.

I thought it a little pricey for the size of the book, but after reading it, it is well worth the price. Simple, straightforward rules that should help everyone avoid lawsuits. It should be required reading for all nurse practitioner programs, wouldn't hurt medical programs either. Can't say enough good things about this book, I'm looking forward to reading Buppert's other books.

The content is kind of chaos and the book seems like a graduate student project

This is probably one of the most unique books on IT project risk management in that it doesn't go into the process and techniques of risk management, but in the common risks and how to deal with them.

Don't expect qualitative or quantitative risk assessment methods, or even a risk management process that is almost an obligatory part of most project management books. Do expect the collective wisdom of real people who were interviewed, and their recommendations for dealing with the 'real risks'.

These risks range from misaligned or unwarranted expectations to slippery requirements. If you've managed an IT project many of the risks will be familiar. How the PMs who were interviewed handled them will be illuminating.

Aside from the fact that this is a highly readable book that is packed with wisdom and advice, the appendices also add a considerable value. Appendix 1 cross references the risks (constructs) by theme making it easy to quickly find the solution to a particular issue. Appendix 2 gives 5 hypothetical project profiles that reinforce the information in the body of the book, and Appendix 3 is a collection of strategies from the body of the book.

Regardless of whether you are preparing to manage your first project or are seasoned and battle-scared, this book provides knowledge and advice that you can use.

This book is a must-read for most wannabe fixed income traders, portfolio managers, and risk managers.
The author leads the reader through many different techniques and examples of fixed income strategy in the real world.
Concepts such as carry, roll, and rich-cheap are explained in simple terms and excellent examples highlight current examples and offer paths to future success.
The discussion of an integrated approach to generating your own view on the markets is critically useful to all asset managers and strategists.
The reason why I drop 1 star is that there is little emphasis on credit risk and credit-related strategies - which is making up an increasing component of fixed income asset management - a chapter on credit strategies would have made this a five star essential. Nevertheless a detailed and easy to read overview of bond strategies.

provide basics for various topics: bond pricing, college level economics (macroecon), physcho, ...
BUT neither is specific and in-depth.

Personally I don't think it is enough for traders, nor for quant/quant developpers.

A bad buy for my personal bookshelf.

I have used this book in assisting physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners with contract negotiation since the first edition. It is an excellent resource for contract and salary negotiation. The step-by-step, systematic and supportive approach is helpful for any healthcare professional and really could be used by anyone in any career as a guideline to negotiation. The planner, included in the book, is a very helpful tool. I have recommended this book to many nurse practitioners and physician assistants throughout the years and all have reported that they found it to be invaluable.

Provides basic knowledge of the concepts for contract negotiation and implementation. One could find with minimal effort the same basic level of information on their own through Internet searches and journal reviews for a tiny fraction of the cost of this book. Do not waste your money on this particular book like I did.

This book is a fair guide but not a definite guide. The book is setup from a lecture perspective. Multiple powerpoint slides augmented by additonal notes and comments. A few of the powerpoint slides are difficult to read (small slides with very small print). Would of been nice if the book came with a CD or some type of media with the slides on them electronically. Also, keep in mind and to my surprise, the book DOES NOT include answers to the assignemnts in the back of the book (assignemnt, assignemnt resources and the exam prep!!).

The book is fine. However, it's not complete for whom wants to take the certification.

Do not expect to have a complete course with only this book.

This is the one book you want your pension officer to read before he decides what to do with your retirement money. Last year hedge funds did radically better than market indexes and mutual funds. More and more pension plans, insurance companies and other institutions are putting money into these non-traditional investment pools. Hedge funds differ from other types of investment in various ways, but as their name suggests, their main promise is to "hedge" against market risk. The right kind of fund is not correlated with markets, so that when for example the Dow and Nasdaq head south, your hedge investment does not go down with them. How and whether managers achieve this is no simple matter. "Each fund is different," one of the authors in this comprehensive guide writes (p.95). Virginia Parker, the editor of the book, is just the right person to unpack the complex ideas of risk and its management. A recognized authority in the development of specialized performance benchmarks, she tailors and manages portfolios for institutional clients. As a manager of hedge fund managers, she knows the industry inside out. Parker has put together a stellar group of authors. These experienced investors, fund managers, consultants, bankers and brokers present distinct perspectives on the industry. As Parker and Randolf Warsager write in the useful introduction, "This is not a theoretical volume-most of the authors are practitioners..." The book is not easy to get through, however. It is dense with information that requires close attention. Some readers may find it more useful as a reference for specific topics rather than a cover-to-cover read. But if you're willing to put in the effort, there are rewarding insights in every one of the 24 chapters. Here is an example from Parker. In 1998, the year of the Long Term Capital Management debacle, some investors wanted to withdraw their money from certain managers. These managers had invested in Russian bonds, yet "knew little about sovereign risk, Russian politics and Russian counterparties." (p.82) But recognizing the danger did not help the investors. Because of terms they had previously accepted, they were forced to wait several months for redemption of their capital. By that time, "most of the hedge fund assets were gone." This is the sort of thing that gave hedge funds a bad name and led to their being branded as very risky investments. Parker details an approach, using a trading manager, that helps select the right terms and agreement for an investor, reducing the danger of such situations. The other authors also provide practical pointers. As one of them, Tanya Styblo Beder, explains, "What must be avoided are risks that are taken without proper compensation, risks that are left unmanaged, or risks that are too large in relation to the capital." (p.155) The bottom line: For many investors, avoiding hedge funds is at least as risky as investing in them. In these markets, proper hedging can preserve your nest egg. But read the book first. Or make sure your pension officer does.

Chidem Kurdas New York City

This info is available elsewhere and there's no value add by the author.