Budget Books

This book is really not that good. It is ok and has a few sharp, interesting comments on banks and banking services, but overall, it has very little that is original to say. I would not recommend it to anyone. It got 2 stars because at least I didn't notice to many errors in it. It was a tedious book.

I love this book! Before reading this book, I wondered how anyone could ever save money in the world today. It has helped me to mangage my money easily. An easy to read book, which I use now as a reference whenever I have a question concerning my personal finances. I finally started a 401K, bought a house, a new car, and I am finally learning to save some money,instead of living paycheck to paycheck.

Anyone can easily understand and make a decision about their personal financial future, and also what the best approach for getting out of debt. Good analogies-

Contrary to some of the reviews I've read here, this book really helped me out with Managing my Money. I now have better control over my finances and am almost out of debt. The simple secret is applying what they teach.

This has the basic knowledge need to manage your finacing ranging from simple budgeting, credit, stocks and mutual funds, Certificate of Deposit, how to read the market and the prime rate and what it all means. Also, it provides the mental mindset you need to manage and spend money properly, without resorting to short term spending splurges. There's tables for calcuating college funds, morgages, and retirements but most importantly how to avoid the many traps and scams many vendors use to make money off of you without providing any extra services. The one thing I found somewhat worrysome is the way the authors protrayed the banks and other institutions to the point of scaring the reader into being nearly paranoid of all financial instistutions. The fees these institutions charge are describe in the book with good details. A good "how to avoid pitfalls" book.

John Steele Gordon has taken what could be an amazingly dull topic, limited in appeal, and translated it into a spectacular read for anyone with at least a basic education. This great little book is a welcome addition for folks interested in finance, the U.S. economy, and the national deficit. Nonetheless, despite its breezy style and short length (traits typically necessary for widespread appeal), I don't expect it will reach a wide audience. Consider yourself lucky that you've discovered this plain-language, excellent primer on how our national debt came to be!

The author's premise, like that of Alexander Hamilton, is that a national debt can be used constructively to monetize an economy. Both men were quite correct, and the debt served its purpose beautifully in supporting the fledging United States of America. It's subsequently been bastardized by numerous administrations, as a means of funding open-ended congressional and executive expenditures of middling value. Throughout the narrative of changes in the U.S. debt, the author details the creation and destruction of the National Bank of the United States. This institution flourished under Federalist rule, and languished or disappeared entirely when populist presidents (Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson) sat in office.

Overall, a remarkable book that will be discovered by too few, and certainly treasured by those lucky enough to discover it.

The book is okay ... but in general the book attempts to have the reader buy into Hamilton and his develpment of the National Debt as a good thing in todays economic system.

It was set up originally to help our economy expand and to be used in a way such that in difficult times money would be borrowed so that in prosperous times it could be paid back. Although it is a factual account of a major portion of our Nations'Economic history it fails to take into account one thing in its summary, the Human Equation.

All things work great on paper but in this instance this is not the case. The current system, seeing that it has no intent of ever paying back the current debt, now has adopted the belief that as long as the debt to GNP ratio stays within + or - 5%, everything will be OK. This is where the book falls short, it doesn't analyse Hamiltons' theories as they apply today, accounting for Human Intervention. It instead tries to explain away our current economic problems as part of economic evolution. Not the case. Socialism works great on paper but fails in real life. Why.... Humanity. Simply put, if you borrow more than you could ever make or pay back, sooner or later you reach a point of critical mass (or you just keep printing more money, hence inflation).

None the less, if some basic, simplistic history is what you want want, here it is.

I tip my hat to Mr. Gordon for providing a compelling short history of national debt, and how it has been shaped by tariffs, taxation and ever-increasing spending that has run amok in recent decades. It is a fascinating study into the competing visions of fiscal responsibility, notably the balanced budget extolled by Jeffersonians, which has actually been achieved on numerous occasions, versus deficit spending espoused by Hamiltonians, and of which John Maynard Keynes became the leading exponent in the inter-wars years between WWI and WWII.

While debts traditionally run high during wars, Gordon notes that since WWII, the yearly budget has rarely been balanced. It is during this time that Keynesian theory took hold and in Gordon's view led to a budget deficit that quickly spun out of control as entitlement programs took up fully three-quarters of the yearly budget. These programs have been virtually untouchable, but in 1995 (the point to which Gordon takes his history) a new reckoning emerged with the Republican landslide in Congress. Bill Clinton duly responded by proposing a balanced budget.

Gordon is a fiscal conservative, but recognizes the need to run in the red during hard economic times. He notes that this was Hoover's mistake at the onset of the Great Depression, as he continued to push for a balanced budget despite warnings that it would make the recession worse. However, the federal deficit, which has mushroomed to over $5 trillion, threatens to bankrupt many of the entitlement programs including social security.

John Steele Gordon is an excellent writer, one whom I have enjoyed very much in the pages of American Heritage and who wrote a nifty history of Wall Street called "The Great Game."

This book, "Hamilton's Blessing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Our National Debt" is a good, if brief, overview of the fiscal history of the American government. It is somewhat misnamed, since the National Debt serves as a background and tie in to each period of fiscal history studied.

The author does a superb job of explaining Alexander Hamilton's establishment of our financial, banking, debt and money system. Here is a woefully under appreciated founder explained succinctly and whose brilliance and indispensability are brought forth by Gordon.

Descriptions of attitudes towards and major changes in financial policy and tools follow. Gordon covers the major aspects: the struggle over the Second National Bank, Jackson's paying off the debt (the only time the US Gov't has been debt free), Lincoln and Chase's tax, greenback and bond finance of the Civil War, the long fight to establish the income tax, the fight over high marginal rates and an efficient system of taxation, and the change in view in the last century from one that deficits and debt were something to be controlled to our current sorry state of view whereby no one worries about much about deficits anymore.

Debt, when properly used, has allowed us to primarily wage wars. It was retired in times of peace. We face an interesting time now, when debt as a percentage of GDP is much higher than it has been in most peacetimes. This raises the question that if we have to fight a truly massive and long war in the future, will we have the capacity to borrow what we need (based on historic statistics, it is a question well worth pondering).

Gordon finishes the book with a polemic against the political culture that has lost its way in terms of providing an efficient and fair and economically sound system of taxation and the willingness to moderate the nation's debt.

This is a good and interesting book. Anyone looking for a succinct telling of the development of our government's fiscal structure will appreciate this gem.

Just two years ago, John Steele Gordon's book on the history of the U.S. federal debt would have seemed dated, even though it was published in 1997. After more than twenty consecutive years of operating in the red, the U.S. federal government had not only erased its annual deficits and began paying down the debt, but surpluses were projected over the next ten years.

This is no longer the case. A tax cut, the war on terrorism, and a slowdown in the economy have combined to push the U.S. government's outlays above its revenues. They have also made this book -- "Hamilton's Blessing" -- relevant again.

Gordon's book is two things: 1) a basic history describing the twists and turns of U.S. fiscal policy over the last two hundred-plus years and 2) a political tract condemning the latest turn U.S. fiscal policy has taken since the Great Society.

By combining the two, Gordon seeks to show that the most recent practice of U.S. fiscal policy -- that of habitually running deficits in peacetime -- is not only unprecedented in U.S. history, but also, more importantly, unsupported by any sound theory of economics.

"Hamilton's Blessing" is well-written and interesting. The book is only slightly marred by a lack of detail in some areas. How exactly does a large public debt hurt your average citizen and by how much? We never find out.

Gordon also should have kept his own political bent out of the book. Among other things, he spends three pages in a less than 200-page book detailing Jack Kemp's personal and political history, including his football career. All very interesting, but not really relevant to the history of the U.S. debt.

I found this book like so many available for Elements. It gives examples and the explanation how to achieve that particular effect, but not a wider description of how those effects work and can be applied to other things. So I see it as very much a companion to "The Missing Manual" which does go into greater background, but doesn't give the final examples this one does. Indeed, Amazon has them both grouped as worth buying together, which is what I did and am pleased I did!

I'm a complete newby at anything photoshop related. I found some of the instructions lacking and hard to follow, but with a little work, I was able to get everything to work properly. I wouldn't want a book that led me through each step by the hand, a good tutorial should inspire you to think through the problems, and this one does. I received amazing support from the readers forum and from the author when ever I needed it. I learned so much from this book that I just ordered How to Cheat at CS3.

This book concentrates on techniques for creating photomontages, and it does it really well. Although it's a fairly specific use of Adobe's `baby' photo editing application, the subject is covered excellently by two authors who clearly know their stuff.

The book is based around Elements 6 for Windows (all the keyboard shortcuts refer to a Windows keyboard). I'm not sure whether there'll be an update when the upcoming Mac version is released but as a user of the current beta on a MacBook I didn't find it too much of a problem to use all the techniques, and they can equally be applied to CS3 if you're lucky (or rich) enough to be running that on either platform. However, the authors make it clear that the techniques work equally well with all versions of Elements from 3 onwards.

This is not necessarily a book for newcomers to Elements - it does assume some basic knowledge, although the first sections cover some more basic photomontage techniques such as selection operations, layer masks, and levels, but if you want to learn how to use the application you're better off looking elsewhere.

I like the layout a lot -- each work-through is presented on a double page spread which is great for working with the book alongside your monitor.

The book is split into 12 sections divided into individual work-throughs with the first 4 covering some basic techniques, leading through to the creation of some pretty complex images.

It's great for dipping in and out of and includes `interludes' at the end of each section covering various topics of interest to digital artists, photographers and general Elements users, and `hot tips' alongside each work-through highlighting related Photoshop techniques.

A CD is supplied which is nicely put together with high quality psd images as starting points for the work-throughs and QuickTime movies to illustrate many of the more complex techniques. Where these are provided for a work-through a symbol appears on the page. The CD is generally easy to navigate and includes some useful extras.

There's a dedicated web site with readers forum to discuss the content of the book with the authors and other Elements users - it's nice that the authors seem to dedicate their time to answering queries and providing assistance to their readers.

Although I've not really done a lot of photomontage work before, this book has fired my imagination and introduced me to some useful general techniques for use in both Elements and CS3.

Look out for some of my photomontages on Flickr soon!

Great step-by-step instructions. The illustrations and presentation of material are clear. The book layout is very inviting. This book gives you instant gratification. You can create and modify digital images quickly. The results are stunning. Highly recommend this book.

It became apparent on Page 10 where the authors referenced the "Magic Selection Brush" instead of "Quick Selection Tool" that they didn't look at Photoshop Elements 6 when writing their book "How to Cheat...". As a new user of Elements 6 I put the book down after this frustrating experience. "How to Cheat..." is an appropriate title, for this wasted purchase. Two stars is generous.

This is one of the first few books i reviewed during my recent research on real options. I would rate it as a more advanced text for those who are already familiar with real options and its ensuing mathematical formulation. Honestly it took me a while to figure out some of the maths ! Definitely not for the faint hearted.

Trigeorgis provides a rigorous treatment of the concepts that are required to facilitate understanding of RO. In fact, a section in Chapter 2 can serve as a reference for a half-semester course in corporate financial theory. Amram's book is a disappointment. Copeland's book is a good alternative for those that seek a readable introductory RO book. However, the edition that I got had numerous errors (check the book's website for corrections). Once you familiarize yourself with the concepts, upgrade yourself to the level of Trigeorgis.

It's a very good book, which has changed my way of thinking in

some sense. Real options method is an exciting and challenging

subject in corporate finance.For sure, it deserves more

attention. Thanks for Mr.Trigeorgis'good job.

A classic text on Real Option Theory. In comparison with Mr Copelands Text on Real Options, Trigeorgis has more depths, but Mr Copelands book is easier to read, as Copeland targets practitioners. The chapter on Real Options for the analysis of competetive strategies is worth reading, and much better than Mr Copelands remarks on that topic, but possibly not fully up to date. The future of real options seems to lie in their combination with game theory, CFROI and dynamic oligopolistic markets. Mr Trigeorgis describes that field of research in its baby stage, as the book is 6 years old, but his theories are still much better, than many other books on that topic.

Real Options is the study of how to value potential business based on the real options they create rather than on discounting a simple stream of (erroneously) forecasted cash flows. Any business venture can be seen as a tangible corollary to a financial option, most commonly the Call or Put Option. For example, when Toyota and Honda build electric-fuel hybrid cars, they are not counting on an immediate stream of cash flows from hybrid car sales. Instead they are establishing a "Real" American Call Option on the ability to go to full hybrid car production ahead of the competition when the market for such vehicles manifests itself. How much they spend on their hybrid car programs is determined by finding the value of this option.

Lenos Trigeorgis shows how this is done. Conceptually, one can follow it well enough, but Lenos is merciless with the math. Still, one can grasp the basic concept by studying this book. A good read on the subject.

I purchased this book while I was 16 months pregnant. I'm a college educated woman who didn't know the difference between a crib and a cradle. I figured this book could help. The descriptions of the products were informative and the "must have" and "might want" labels were helpful. The problem I found was that the book didn't really prepare me when I dropped by my local baby store to register. The car seat models, crib models, etc. were old. The baby industry changes rapidly along with the number of recalls. I found the Baby Bargins book (and website) by Denise and Alan Fields a better consumer guide. Baby Stuff helped me decide which items were necessities, while Baby Bargins helped me decide which brands were top rated by both Consumer Reports and real life parents. If you buy this book, be prepared to keep looking for more information.

I found this book to be one of the best I've ever read on "baby stuff". I've bought copies for everyone I know. This book is definately worth buying!

When I was pregnant and trying to figure out how to prepare for the baby and what to buy, this book was a tremendous help to me. My husband and I live in a one bedroom apartment, and my friends and co-workers had been scaring me by constantly telling me that I just couldn't imagine all the things I was going to have to buy and how expensive it was going to be. I kept arguing with them, thinking, how much can a little baby possibly need in the first year? But I realized that I really didn't know, and decided to try to find out. In the process of educating myself I found this wonderful book. Some of the previous reviewers are right that this book lacks the detailed product comparisons that are available elsewhere. If you are looking for lists of different brands with ratings, this book is not for you (and most of it's recommendations of particular products are already out of date). However, it is wonderful if what you are trying to do is figure out how many little onesie outfits to buy, what on earth a "receiving blanket" is and why you need some, how to decide what kind of car seat you need, and what the difference is between one that costs $50 and one that costs $200. The book systematically goes through all of the many things you could buy and lists them as "optional", "might want", or must have" and goes on to explain why this is so. It also breaks things down into three different budget levels ("lotto winner", "lots of money", or "lots of love") and provides estimates of the total cost of everything you will need based on these different budgets. If you are planning for a first baby, this book may be for you.

I found this book to be far too general for my purposes. I was looking for much more detailed product reviews. I also found it annoying that Mr. Lipper was so heavily biased toward independent juvenile products stores (e.g. the store he manages in New York). He made himself out to be an expert, given his vast experience in selling baby products to expectant parents. However he doesn't have children of his own, so he has never really tested any of these products in real life experience. Don't bother with this book if you are a first time parent and need the nitty gritty details about baby products. Instead, I'd suggest you buy the book BABY BARGAINS by Denise and Alan Fields. They have two very young children and have actual experience with the products that they list in their book. Also, they are not biased toward any one type of store. They advise parents to shop around. I would rate the Fields book 5 stars and can't give more than 2 stars to Lipper's.

This book is somewhat helpful to a new mother. However, I found the book, Baby Bargains by Denise & Alan Fields to be more useful.

I was really expecting this book to bring a much needed update on Ron Champion's book but it's more of the same. The donor is still UK only and even there, it's getting hard to find. The drawings have dimensional errors like Champion's book. The design of the chassis is still lacking because it still does not incorporate some triangulations (Aussie mods) that are known to improve rigidity. A lot of the new designs shown in the book are overly complex (the pedal box is a good example). Finally, it still leaves a bunch of details out. I would recommend people to stay with Champion's book for inspiration and complement with Tanner's book or join a forum.

The book arrived really fast and it was in the condition stated. Would definately by from this seller again.

this is a great companion book for those who wish to build a "Locost" sports car. Very similar to the original which as far as i can tell is no longer printed (and being sold on ebay for as much as ten times it's original cost.) If you want to get into the "Locost" sportscar world this book will get you there. (that and three years of weekends)

Big improvement over the last two books. You REALLY need to spend time on the book's web site (forum) to get the lastest information. I needed the website to understand the front suspension.

Great book, but definitely Eurocentric. None-the-less, this book offers excellent technical drawings. I recommend a calculator that converts metric measurements to inches if you want to use this as an assembly guide. An Excellent book for its intended purpose.This is of course, assuming like myself, you're a Yank.

Hey Barry, I'm thinking that by now your incessant and bothersome needling to the people at Let's Go is amusing to them, hence they don't want to change their "Big Apple" falsehood just because they know it irritates you. Relax man, why don't you go down to Bowery Bar and have a Manhattan! Other readers: check out the comments by Barry A. Popik to understand what I'm talking about. Anyway, regardless of this small detail, I've traveled with many Let's Go books and have never been disappointed.

I am untravelled, unexperienced with city life, and un-financially blessed. Let's Go was my bible in NYC last winter and I had a grand ol' time. Between my pals and I we had like 800 guide books, and Let's Go had by far the most readable, most helpful maps. The fact that its written by poor students (with wit and style) helps too. A good mix of traditional tourist activities with "undiscovered" budget happenings.

In 1997, I dedicated "Big Apple Corner" at Broadway and West 54th Street. NYC is called this because of John J. Fitz Gerald's horseracing columns in the 1920s. Almost all other guidebooks have this correct. I have personally mailed and e-mailed LET'S GO for over four years! For getting "Big Apple" information wrong for the fifth straight year, this gets a one star review. Please, LET'S GO, e-mail me, correct your work, and I won't have to write this again next year!

I bought this guide after looking at numerous others, and this is still the one that I liked the most. Maybe it's b/c I'm a college student on a tight budget, but the Let's Go guides are lifesavers. I skimmed thru the Frommer guide before buying this one and that was just too boring for my taste. Let's Go tells you the truth and what you would really find in nyc. Before your trip, you can use it to map out your entire schedule if you wanted to, which was great b/c it included sites that ppl like me would actually want to visit.

Usually my problem with Let's Go is there's so few changes from year to year. This time, they've totally revamped the format, but the result is unorganized and less informative. It just seems like there's less *stuff* in it. Some lame pictures, arranged largely by topic instead of neighborhood (boo!), some walking maps that don't indicate mileage. That said, it's still the best choice if you're looking to travel cheap or if you're younger, or both. A major improvement is more extensive coverage of the boroughs outside of Manhattan. It's still worth its small price, but I'd get another, more traditional guide book as well.

I just started a home based business and do all my communications via the web and email. This book was a quick read and easy to follow, and gave me a clear direction on how to market my business online, without spending a fortune! I highly recommend this book

I bought this book for my brother who is a new webmaster. I read it before giving it to him and though I didn't get any enlightenment from it (I have been promoting websites for several years), it has become a very useful guide for my brother. If you are just starting a website and need an easy and direct list of things to do to promote your website, this is a good starting book. If you however own multiple sites and are looking for new ideas, this book is not for you.

As an overview for the true novice, this book is full of good, basic, up-to-date ideas. However, this book is defintely not for every business with an online presence - and doesn't say that. The author never clearly states that by using the term "small business" throughout the book, she's actually referring specifically to e-tailers and those providing services to consumers. Most of the tips and suggestions would not be useful or practical if you're a consultant or use the web to promote other business-to-business types of products and services. For that, I'm disappointed.

This book is a good starting point for someone who has no idea where to begin. I just started my online business and was looking for something that would give me a basic introduction and this book did that very well. If you are looking for a lot of detail on search engine optimization this may not be what you want though.

What can I expect from a book with a cheap title and a cheap price? Well, it's not bad but all the info is loosely put together, and it is best served as an excellent intro book on the subject. Its 127 pages are rather good. Recommended as a quick intro and a stepping stone to more advanced learning on the subject.

As a previous reviewer wrote, I was truly dismayed at the level of technical expertise tha the readers of this text are assumed to have. The book definitely contains several gems, but non-technical managers would be better off finding other sources that are more geared for their skill base.

For example, I enjoyed Chapter 9 which described the major development standards on a relatively high level. However, the exercises at the end of the chapter dealt into the intricacies of the standards, which was not a level of detail achieved within the chapter text.

Also, many of the other exercises within the chapters seem more related to system design than to schedule and budget estimation, which I assumed would be the crux of the book.

So, this book may be best read by technical personnel moving into a management position, but for non-technical personnel I would recommend finding another source of information.

If you have never been a project manager, and suddenly you need to learn rules of the game, this is a book I would recommend you to use as a reference material. It is easy to read, has real life examples and various templates related to project management are presented in this book. Highly recommended.

We (26 person team) just finished a 2+ year project using On Time Within Budget as our process guide. Bottom line: the project came in 7 weeks late -- not bad for a company used to 6 to 12 month schedule overruns. We'll do better next time with more experience on the methods described in the book. Advice to others: the chapters on estimation, standards, and risk analysis are great. The chapters on software teams, quality assurance and testing are good pointers to what we needed to know, but we also used other books on these subjects to fill in more details that we needed. Most everyone liked the epilogue (pulling it all together). This book helped to pull us out of the dark ages into modern software project management. Strongly recommended!

I don't usually write reviews but I was prompted to do this one because I strongly disagree with a preceding review. I am an EE senior manager and software development had always been a mystery to me until I got hold of On Time, Within Budget. I particularly found the following chapters helpful: Chapter 1 which includes reasons for project success and failure, Chapter 2 on risk management and how to reduce the cost of risk events, Chapter 5 on the management of software engineers, and most especially the Epilogue on pulling it all together, which provides a great overall perspective.

This book is full of real-life examples; it was clearly written by someone who has been down in the trenches. This adds credibility to the methods described.

I have learned a lot from the book and I use it as a reference regularly.

I used On Time Within Budget at a post grad course last year on software project management (we switched mid-course from the 2nd edition to the 3rd). After the course I brought it to the attention of our Software Process Office at our company and in July it was adopted as the standard text to be used by all our project managers. In the last 4 months we have introduced risk analysis, standard status reporting, and stepwise estimation. We are planning to start preparing for an SEI assessment early next year. Everyone's guide is the Bennatan book (we are also now using the IEEE standards and the SEI CMM guideline books).
I don't think our company would have taken all this on without this book. It doesn't only suggest what to do it also explains why.

Save your money. This cookbook is not worth your time. I love and collect cookbooks, so I was very disappointed when I began reading this rather pathetic book. I would say it is probably the worst cookbook I have ever purchased. It went immediately to our local thrift store. Maybe they will get a quarter for it.

I received the book in good time and in good shape as stated.

I mainly bake for my family, as my husband enjoys cooking our meals. This cookbook is my favorite. The Supreme Chocolate Cake with Fluffy Fudge Frosting is a must at each birthday throughout the year. Also, the Cold Blueberry Pie (Openfaced Blueberry Pie in the third edition of the book) is fantastic. My friends request that I make that for all our get-togethers. The Gingerbread recipe is another favorite. I could go on and on....I recieved this book as a gift about 15 years ago and it shows. It was falling apart. Thankfully, Mary published another edition. My daughter now has editions 2 and 3 in her collection of cookbooks. I know that she too will be using these cookbooks long into the future.

The fact that this book is in its THIRD edition is a very, very good thing, proving that it was popular enough to merit a third edition. I have a copy that is wearing out so it was time for a new one.
Happily, the new edition contains some updates which make it easer for today's families to stay within a food budget. The author has remained flexible and open-minded enough to accommodate the busy lives of many families today and to acknowledge that not everyone can spend hours in the kitchen making meals. There are still plenty of homecooked meals that DO take some time and planning ahead but there are others that don't take nearly as long.
I'd strongly recommend you use the "Search Inside the Book" function here at Amazon to get an idea of the contents of this book...and then buy a copy. It'll be worth it!

I really liked "Dining on a Dime" a lot better. Not much new info, and a lot of info I just didn't need. The recipes didn't look that great, and there weren't that many tips. Nice cover, though.