Insurance Books

This text is very useful for understanding what one might refer to as the social construction of the category of disability. It is not anti-disability in any sense at all. The reviewer who criticized it as such profoundly misunderstands the volume and reads it in what seems to me a perverse way. Any one who wants to understand a public policy issue would be well advised to make use of this book.

This text is required reading in the Bryn Mawr College Master's program in Social Work. It is articulate, insightful, in depth, and nuanced. Her analysis covers a great deal of ground: it includes historical, political, and sociological analyses of our concept of the disabled as a category of people entitled to benefits.

I do not see her at all as for or against the disabled. She says, "the very essence of society is providing help to those in need." She explains who we see as disabled, why we do so, and how we identify and validate each category within the broad notion of disabled.

What I particularly enjoyed is her ability to identify similar ways that people have thought about aspects of disability across centuries of history.

Highly recommended.

"The Disabled State" was a required text for our English course on Disability Discourses at the University of California, Berkeley.

Two aspects about the text are disturbing, in that they perpetuate ignorance and hostility towards disability, which remain embedded in the minds of American society.

The first problem arises with Ms. Stone's reference to a student with low vision, who helps a completely blind person understand the feel and contour of a statue in a museum: "This is the blind leading the blind." People with low vision are NOT totally blind. Many see well enough to move about with grace, and are quite capable of helping a blind person appreciate the environments of which they encounter.

Secondly, Ms. Stone claims that those living with a disability enjoy a "privileged" station in life, which only exasperates the hatred and intolerance of which the disabled community faces each day.

Disabilityphobic bigots who see the disabled as "targets" will like the author's interpretation. Regan Mason, U C Berkeley, 1999

If you are brand new to outside sales, this book - if you can still find it - is simply awesome. It will provide all the basics to get started, from what company to represent, how to prospect, employer and employee presentations, closing issues, enrollment and service after the sale.

I would recommend this book highly, again, if you can find a copy.

The issue of fax broadcasting is now moot, due to new laws AND it was only a very small part of an excellent tutrorial to outside insurance sales. I have told others that, with this book, you could be dropped anywhere in the US and earn an income, so long as you have a license to market and sell insurance.

Good luck to all!!!

This guy's marketing method is to broadcast an insurance newsletter by email. The spam is called INSURANCE NEWSCAST, and he claims over 225,000 daily subscribers. I never subscribed to that newsletter, but that doesn't stop him from sending me a copy every day. My guess is that the other 224,999 recipients of the newscast didn't sign up for it either.

From Worksite Marketing To Website Marketing is a detailed examination of the distribution of voluntary employee benefit plans at the worksite. There are 403 pages of time-tested and field-proven sales procedures and methods that will get a person profitable in this market. Every phase of voluntary employee benefits plans is discussed from a field perspective including the marketing process, niche markets, voluntary products and specialized techniques.

There are 42 chapters and 35 indispensable charts and forms to help a person build their voluntary employee benefit revenue stream.

As we enter the new millennium, the sale of voluntary employee benefit plans is booming. Not only is the number of new accounts growing, but the size of those accounts is increasing as well. This book can serve as your guide to increased sales and service.

[[ASIN:007353062X Fundamentals of Corporate Finance Standard Edition]
As of today October 10, 2008 I have not received my book. I sent an email to the company several days ago and have not heard a response. This is my first and last time using this website to order. I am very disappointed!!!!! I would really appreciate to hear from someone and to receive a refund for my book if I don't receive it. Please and Thank You!!! Tracy Robinson

I never received the item from the seller. But I am very happy with amazon, they refunded me my money within two days.

I never got my shipment and not even my refund and the seller refused to respond to my inquiries

Hey, it's a TEXTBOOK. Since my professor didn't know JACK about the future value of my education, let alone money, I had to rely on Fundamentals of Corporate Finance to teach me. It wa clear, concise, and had some great practical problems. The CD-ROM made an excellent beer coaster, too.

This text is for intermediate level business and finance students, and is very informative and well written. I read it two times with great pleasure. It is not boring, even for those outside the field (I must admit I did not work the problems though!). I highly recommend it.

My insurance class was unanimous in their disappointment with this textbook. Why?

1) VERBOSE - Takes twice as long to explain a concept as the concise authors in the Kaplan or Bisys book series. Also recommended is Principles of Risk Mgt. and Insurance by George Rejda (http://www.aw-bc.com/rejda/). I found out about these alternates mid-semester after it was too late to switch - don't get stuck like I did.
2) NO ONLINE QUIZZES OR POWERPOINT SUMMARY SLIDES - Kaplan, Bisys and George Rejda offer these helpful study aids.
3) POOR FORMATTING - definitions are not bolded, italicized or presented as bullet points; sample problems are incorporated within long paragraphs, rather than separated out; margins are razor thin on the top and sides, allowing no room for notes.
4) BIASED - The authors generously sprinkle the text with their obvious bias favoring the insurance industry, especially regarding health care coverage. New approaches to health care and access are characterized as "attacks" (p.369 & 382) and "crusades" (p.382); "Patients rarely object to more testing because it might do them some good, even if it is not cost effective for society as a whole." (p.367); and "the debate over availability and affordability is a thinly veiled demand for cross-subsidies in the insurance market." (p.114). That's just the tip of the iceberg.

If it was possible to give this book zero stars, I would. Whatever you do, don't buy the book new - it's so poorly written that my entire class is offloading theirs at the end of the fall 2007 semester, so it will be on Amazon soon.

I thought it would be a sleeper,but quite the contrary..I wish I would have read this book 20 years ago.

Well, I guess I can try to review this book from the only perspective I read it from: that of a student. I had to read it for my CFP class on Insurance, and, as an introduction to most forms of insurance, it explains the forms in a very methodical and systematic way; it was very easy to follow and tough to get completely lost.

Honestly, I was never really fascinated with insurance. My life-licensing class was 24 hours of classroom time spread out over one weekend, so maybe that has created some insurance-related intellectual scars. The sections on Life Insurance and the basic components of any insurance contract and the whole insurance process were already familiar to me, so I found those sections incredibly uninteresting. The other forms of insurance were much more interesting and gave me a great foundation for other insurance studies I've done since.

The prose of the book, too, flows extremely well. In fact, I usually just lightly read passages explaining computations and formulas because I come back later to review them in-depth; however, while reading this book, I actually felt I fully understood most of the computations even while I read (which almost never happens because most formula-explaining reads much like Kant's "Metaphysics of Morals").

Just one closing point... I guess you'd have to be either Insurance Commissioner or a professor of insurance to be really interested in this material, but the authors write in a way that allows even the average CFP or insurance student to come away from the book with a good sense of how insurance works and where it fits into an individual's financial plan.

a must read book that provides a captivating look at the maritime industry that makes for easy and informative reading. As a marine banker I particularly liked the Snatch and Grab caper in Cancun, Mexico......

'Gotcha' provides an intriguing depiction of maritime fraud in Latin America and the Caribbean, an area the author knows intimately well. An interesting and easy reading book packed with useful information that exposes both the good guys and the bad. I know because I know them all."

Very little insight into international marine insurance or any fraud attached to it will be gained from reading this badly written book. Geary appears to be a yacht surveyor in the Caribbean, a very small part of marine surveying, the book is a catalogue of his exploits in this area and is a thinly veiled advertisement for using his services. There is nothing in here about the day to day practice of international, commercial marine insurance and marine surveying as applied to merchant vessels, which he appears not to know about or to have participated in. As for the problems with Salvage Association or Lloyd's agency , which the cover of the book says he will reveal, what he says is laughable and does not bear any other comment.Reading this book will not give anyone any insight into marine insurance or its problems and certainly not commercial marine surveying, except, perhaps if they own a rather small yacht in the West Indies

This is an incomplete book that covers only the basics of "forming" a LLC. Not "maintaining"! I bought this book hoping to learn how to protect my business from lawsuits when litigants try to "pierce the corporate veil". Unfortunately there's NO talk about the formalities of maintaining the LLC. No talk about NOT commingling personal expenses with LLC expenses. No talk about setting up a separate LLC bank account. No talk about having a separate business phone line. No talk about having your web site registered in the name of the LLC. And where's the talk about sufficiently capitalizing the LLC relative to the level of business it generates? Failure to start the LLC with enough capital can make you personally liable to lawsuits. A dime a dozen are agents, lawyers and authors that try to make a buck off of you by getting you incorporated "before the ink dries". Just once I'd like to see someone who goes the whole nine yards by telling the WHOLE story about incorporating. The body of this book is 92 pages long followed by some forms...

Very helpful with an LLC in California. Insightful information as to California Codes and structural composition of the limited liability company.

While ongoing affairs are not covered, that is the beauty of the LLC. Resolutions, meetings of shareholders and managers are not required to maintain limited liability characteristics.

I found this book helpful and time-saving. In general, it provides an overview of the limited liability company format, making entity comparisons between LLCs, corporations, and partnerships. It also focuses on specific California issues, such as California (as well as federal) tax angles. The appendices furnish an array of useful forms, some not directly related to LLC formation, but important in the larger business context. Included are state of California Articles of Organization for LLC formation, a model operating agreement, sample minutes of the members' first organizational meeting, an application for reservation of name, a preorganization subscription agreement, a bill of sale agreement, and a medical and dental reimbursement plan. Finally, membership certificates are appended as well and will do the job, but since these are photocopies, most people will want to order fancy custom-printed membership certificates from one of the companies supplying them. Almost all of these items can be tracked down by the persistent but prove especially handy in this one-stop format. One exception is the detailed operating agreement provided, which is invaluable and worth the price of the book alone. I could not have created this essential document on my own without this model. The step-by-step instructions, with filled-in forms as examples, and the appended form archives considerably speeded up the process of formation of my California LLC, if not "before the ink dries!" as the title asserts.

This book is the most well written guide to the NEC I have ever read. The information is well presented, well written, and devoid of grammatical or printing errors. To a working electrician, its layout is extremely logical, in that it takes the information of the NEC, and lays it out in a very practical manner. In other words, it teaches concepts of the NEC as they would be applied in the real world. I highly recommend this book to the working electrician, and others interested in learning about how the NEC is meant to be applied.

I notice that other reviewers are complaining about this book's technical language. Balderdash! For anyone familiar with the actual National Electrical Code, I assure you that this guide is ten times easier to read and apply.

The author takes a "situational" approach to explaining the NEC. When addressing swimming pools, for example, he provides an illustration of a typical installation, including every reasonable electrical requirement and likely customer request. Then he surrounds the illustration with every pertinent code requirement, each with an arrow pointing to the part of the drawing it's addressing. Instead of having to flip back and forth through the book, every code reference you need is right there, gathered together on one page, with an illustration to boot! Beautiful!

Have trouble with motor calculations? His drawings and explanations on this subject alone is worth the price of this book.

Perhaps what other reviewers have misunderstood is that this is not a "how-to" book. It was not intended to be something to explain to a homeowner how to wire a 3-way switch. For that, go to Lowes and buy "You Can Do It!--Wiring For Novices", or "How To Burn Your Own House Down!", or whatever it's called.

This is an illustrated guide, intended to aid professionals (and reasonably bright laymen) in the application of what can seem like the arcane requirements of the NRC.

I am a career electrician, with over 30 years of professional experience. I have also taught the trade to high school tech students, and have used this book with amazing success. I highly recommend it to anyone who has to use the regular Codebook in any way.

By the way, "Luminaire" is a designation for the trusty old "light fixture" that was foisted upon us by the NEC in the 2002 Code revamping. In an attempt to make the Code more "international" (read: more book sales abroad) they adopted this ludicrous nomenclature, evidently to appease the French. How about "Yo, mes amis. It's "LIGHT FIXTURE" from now on. Cappish?"

They also took this opportunity to inflict the cursed metric system on us, to the great annoyance and inconvenience of everyone (Man, don't even get me started).

Bon Chance, Bruce

According to admittedly subjective analysis of said text, it is my conclusion that the syntactical arrangement of information is unnecessarily convoluted.

In other words (which ought to be the title of the study guide), the language is far too elevated. I have to read over three-quarters of the sections several times in order to understand it. And I'm no dummy. I have BA in English, and I am a writer/editor. I am a layman electrician and I have to spend twice as long trying to get my questions answered than I think I should have to spend. If "luminaries" mean "lighting fixtures," then why not just say "lighting fixtures!" Now I have to mentally insert "lighting fixtures" whenever I read "luminaries." Why?! The NEC may be illustrated in this book, but text that explains the diagrams are poorly written and sometimes cryptic.

I understand I am a layman, but even if I were a electrician in training, I would be very upset with this book. I have to spend half of my time trying to decipher the language instead of simply learning the information.

In summary, I do not recommend this book. To author, Charles Miller, do us all a favor and bring the language down a notch or two. Just because the subject matter is technical, doesn't mean the language has to. The true mark of one who has mastered a craft is the ability to teach the concepts and practices in terms anyone can understand, not just other masters.

This book will give risk managers something to think about when they start to implement credit derivatives as part of the strategy.

You can understand the concept of credit derivatives

This book is not a good tome for risk managers, for marketers, or for quantitative professionals. It's as if Nelken read some articles and cobbled up this book. Waste of time and money.

This book provides a good sampling of actuarial studies. It would not be especially helpful for studying for an exam.

This text is a good introduction for a beginner who want to know what an actury does. It introduces actuarial and financial maths. It also involves in some discussion on Insurance companies and their various policies.
Because it is an introductory textbook, it does not require high level of mathematical skills. Overall, it is a good text, deserve to read.

As the title suggests, this book provides a brief (170 page) introduction to actuarial studies, focussing, in particular, on basic financial mathematics (mainly compound interest and annuity calculations), demography (the life table and mortality calculations) and some basic life insurance premium calculations, as well as providing a brief overview of some insurance product types (mainly life insurance products). That's right, this book is pretty much all about life insurance. That might be acceptable if this book were entitled "An Introduction to Life Insurance Mathematics", but it's not. The main areas in which actuaries work are: pensions (or superannuation), financial management, life insurance and property and casualty insurance (aka general insurance). Yet, many of these areas are barely touched on. The subject of general insurance takes up less than 5 pages of the book. Even if you are purchasing this book to provide yourself with an introduction to life insurance, there are better books out there. This book is far too basic to be worth the purchase price and contains very few exercises. I would recommend that instead of purchasing this book you buy Fundamentals of Actuarial Mathematics. It's a more advanced text, but you will get more use out of it.

This book takes the subject of diversification to a 2007/2008 level by highlighting the Funds ETF's and Derivatives that are now being created to give the serious investor an opportunity to apply them. A serious book for the investor who wants to get it right. Be sure to cover the last chapters.

This book is a needed antidote to the glib advice often given to create a diversified portfolio and then just hold it, no matter what happens (except for periodic rebalancing). These portfolios are often marketed as "lazy chair", or "coffeehouse", etc....but, as this book makes clear, life is, unfortunately, not that simple. This book explains the academic theory that underlies the buy-and-hold philosophy, and then points out the practical flaws for a real-life, individual. The basic problem is that in the real world investors are concerned with the next ten years or so (which is especially critical for those in the early years of retirement), not the last century of financial date used to suppport the buy-and-hold recommendation. In practice, Carlson points out that in the short-to-medium term there are valuation cycles, and these down cycles can result in sharp downturns that could devastate a buy-and-hold investor. That is particularly true if an investor holds all-market index funds, which are often a key part of the simplified buy-and-hold strategy.

Carlson makes a number of suggestions on how to act as an investor, and I will mention a couple of these here. Basically, you need to take into account the valuation cycles, and, like a fox, make adjustments periodically. Timing the market is impossible, so investors have to act like risk managers, and position themselves with a "core" portfolio that should perform well in downturns, while having other, riskier positions that fluctuate, using sell signals to avoid large losses. Another tactic is to use alternative investments that use hedge-fund like strategies to perform well in various market conditions.

It should be noted that the one-star reviewer apparently didn't focus on the investment strategies mentioned in the final chapters of the book.

apart from repeatedly telling you that you need to be flexible and act like a fox, this book does not provide any workable strategy or practical lesson that you would put to use, the explanations and criticisms of various investment theories like mpt, capm, bayes theorem, rational beliefs etc. are shallow, don't waste your time and money