Budget Books

Very poor descriptions.
No background informatiion on anything.
Hardly used it, and when I did for a drive through the Picos de Europa, wished I had followed the recommendation of Lonely Planet. Information on time for drive was correct: two and half hours. But it was not as beautiful (breathtaking?)as Fodor made it sound.
The shorter drive to the Lakes of Covadonga would have been a better choice.
I left the guide in a hotel in Madrid, wishing I had not carried it around for 21 days.
Now I feel sorry if someone finds it and uses it. :-(
Alberto L. Mederos.

I am a big fan of the Fodor's series and I use the travel book like a bible. Therefore, I naturally got this one. I thought it would be perfect because I am currently learning Spanish. The book is well laid out with conjugations and pronunciations. However, when it comes to the finding the translation it fell a bit sort. It just doesn't a have a lot of words that a tourist would need, for example I couldn't even find the word tourist in the darn thing!

This is the sort of guide for people who need a guide to walk out the front door of their house. The advice about money exchange is completely outdated now that ATM's are found nearly everywhere in the world. The guide misses several interesting areas of France, most notably the Ardeche region. It completely misses the mark on Vieux Nice by characterizing it as unsafe when in fact it is probably the most interesting part of the town. And if you follow the bar advice, you will normally end up in an Anglophile ersatz pub and miss the French cafe experience. If you are a traveller who likes to remain insulated from the French, buy this book.

I used this guide while traveling in Paris and plan to use it in an upcoming trip through the Riviera. Their tips were insightful yet witty. With this book I found a really nice hotel which was quite cheap - 130 francs ($22) a day for a single room. Follow their advice and splurge on food, the French take their food very seriously. However, don't follow the advice on exchanging money at the American Express office. Their rate is horrible. A better suggestion would be to exchange US cash at one of the exchange bureaus on the street and compare rates. Their 'security suggestions' regarding places to use caution at night were a bit excessive according to my French friends from Paris. Their maps of Paris could have been more substantial as they only covered a few of the arrondissements in great detail. Otherwise a great guide to France.

this book provides a thinking basis and initial insight into the budget process.
It will take people on a beginers level and upgrade their thinking to a medium level.

The book does not provide advanced techniques and methods and does not take into account the advances of new technology.

Overall I do not recommend this book - their are better ones out their.

This book is good but for the price I expected more. Most issues are only given a couple of paragraphs, examples and topics are geared towards manufacturing and there is no CD with the forms in excel - you have to recreate them yourself. I wouldn't call this "total" business budgeting. If I saw this in a bookstore I probably wouldn't buy it unless the price was more like $40.

Okay, so Matthew Lesko has the selling ability on his infomercials, but there's nothing to this book, if you don't get it immediately after it comes out from the publisher. He's got a disclaimer right in the front of the book that all the information in the book is outdated by the time it's published.

It may not be his fault as I've written about 100 different agencies and organizations looking for money along with information just for information for anything from vehicle seizures to government giveaways.

Out of all of those wasted man-hours, letters, and stamps I got 4 or 5 actual responses,...the rest came back "no such address" or "no such person, business" etc. Granted (pun intended) I was looking mostly for free government money for businesses among other stuff but this shouldn't be impossible to do.

I've heard from various sources that these Government office's tend to close up and move every six to nine months, so they don't have to give the citizens "free-money" so like I said I don't blame Matthew Lesko for that bit as it's nigh on impossible to chase a "running papertrail" unless you've already got money and know your way around Washington DC.

This book has a tremendous amount of information on how to obtain money and it could possibly change your life. However a lot of the programs or information are state specific or in a special category, meaning not all programs are available to every state or to every individual for that matter. If you can find a program that you fit into and it works then great! Otherwise this book gives you other options about different things you can do to obtain "Free Money to Change Your Life" including possibly moving to another state or changing your profession.

I work for an organization listed in the book, and we do not distribute "Free Money". We provide small business loans at a rate between a mortgage and a credit card, and I honestly feel bad for the people who contact me because they found me in this book.

If you're looking for resources for a small business, there are plenty of names you can get without spending whatever this book costs. [...]

This book must provide incomplete information, given that 90% of the inqueries I receive do not qualify due to location. As a neighborhood based group in an north-east inner city, we focus on our neighborhood and do not lend outside of city limits, let alone Tennessee.

Save your money. Please do not buy this book. It will only make you look foolish to those you tell about it.

As a successful grant writer I know how hard it is to get into the spirit of writing a good document. I'd highly suggest getting books that are more realistic like "Government Funding and You" or the "Grant Workbook". Both of these books walk you through realistic scenarios to get grants and they simply aren't hype books like this one!

Kelli

This book was absolutely NO HELP at all. It's mainly about getting grants from the government and you have to be within a certain income bracket to do so. If you're middle class, FORGET IT! :(

This manual is only for individuals that don't care about the quality of their wooden dummy construction. I really feel that people can do better than this - even without construction experience. Spend some time when making your dummy. Research the internet for dummy plans. There are quality plans out there. Trust me. You don't want to have a cheap dummy. Its something that you can have your entire life.

It seems that the author completly missed the point. Traditional wooden dummy measures are mostly wrong, since they are based on false assumptions. Look for correct measures at the internet, for free. Woodwork techniques descriptions are fine and the mounting system description may be useful, but again, there are better ones available for free at the internet. Its "human response" dummy still has to prove its usefulness.

The arms and legs and body of the dummies that this man is making aren't even close to the traditional sizes. If you are looking for an idea or drafting plan on how to make a real traditional dummy don't buy this book.

Although innovative in many ways, this guide to making cheap muk jongs is not worth the price asked. If it were priced at $9.95, it might be worth a look, but at $16 plus shipping it lacks enough in content to make it not worth the more expensive price.
Having said that, it should be noted that this book explains how to make a cheap man's version of a wooden man---NOT a traditional Wing Chun dummy. Keep in mind, the title of the book is "The Mook Jong Construction Manual" not "How to Make Your Own Traditional Wing Chun Dummy." It is a guide to making an economical muk jong which mimics the Wing Chun wooden dummy, but lacks the beauty and finesse of the real thing. Contrary to what's stated, you will need some carpentry skills, tools, and an abundant amount of time before it's finished.
Finally, the details in the construction procedures and b/w pictures shown were good enough for a novice to contruct a dummy.

its a great book. the human response dummy is worth the price of the book itself. being handy with tools helps but you dont have to have handyman skills. i supplemeted this with free info on the net but the book is well worth the price. i added to the human response dummy design and made two legs instead of one and in addition to having a knife fighting dummy I have a takedown dummy i use for building my wrestling skills. if you like cover it with strips of old car tires an it will last you for life. additional ideas can be found by doing a search on the net for "pell" or medieval pells which were basically knife and sword training tools. buy the book and you will save money and be able to build a great dummy.

I think this is a great book. I stayed in Chile for about 5 months and I took this guide everywhere and it was always very helpful. The only thing I didn't like was that the restaurants and hotels recommended are always kind of expensive, well at lest for students they are. I lent it to a friend who also stayed there for a long period and when he returned it he said he also liked it. It covers all of Chile's regions (even Easter Island) and it has a lot of information of each. They even include information on when you should visit certain places, like when you can see the penguins in the south or when you should visit the desert in the north.

PS.- There is a review that says something about Argentina, non-existing hotels and restaurants and changes in monetary system... I don't think that comment has anything to do with Fodor's Chile Guide and I can assure you that this guide is really NOT OUTDATED AND CERTAINLY NOT MISLEADING.

We bought this book for a trip we took to Chile and tossed it...by the first week. Their recommendations are substandard and the information contained in the book is very limited. I am wondering if they ever visited Chile before they printed this book. If you are looking for a very comprehensive guide book on Chile check out "Chile Experience Travel Guide" ISBN 956-7264-79-1

This book caused us many problems during our visit to Argentina. First of all, it is out of date........by years. Restaurants no longer exist in one case we were told at least 5 years. Hotels completely changed ownership and management, again many years ago. The monetary system completely changed.

I needed a book for quick brush-up of statistics over a weekend. Realized I was better off with some of the more detailed books. Typically statistics books introduce new concepts by building on material across successive chapters. This book does not do that and introduces disjoint ideas. Shouldn't have expected anything better from a small paperback. If it's forumulae you need to review get one of those formulae booklets rather than spending on this book.

If you must buy a stats book then I guess this would be as good as any other pocket reference guide. Why bother? There are enough fantastic websites with answers to your stats questions. Surf Amazon for a stats package reference book and like Excel, Minitab, SAS, etc. The title says it all: "Easy Outline." It's an accurate title, but the content isn't overly helpful. If you are completely new to Stats then you'll need more help than this book can give. If you are a bit rusty, then Google will have your answers.

The book Beauty All Around You has the subtitle How to Create Large Private Low-Maintenance Gardens, Even on Small Lots and Small Budgets. This book is no substitution for Gardens Are for People by Thomas D. Church. I expected more from the book that was provided. The book for the most part is how to build a berm, where to place it and a plant glossery. It addresses suburban lots of 1 acre or smaller and does little to provide aesthetic recommendations, just visual blocking using berms. The book contains just 12 color photos.

This is a 781-word article and they are trying to see it for $6? What a rip off.

I can tell you all you need to know about a comptroller's deployment to Taszar without paying $6 and I will say it right here and now.

Taszar is in Hungary, a NATO member country. Around the time this writer was there, there may have been 500 personnel there. The base provided very good life support. The comptroller's job was to certify funds on funding requests for supplies and services that provided life support to the soldiers and civilians on this base.

Taszar operated as a staging base for the Army's mission under Operation Joint Forge in Bosnia. Originally, all movement in and out of Bosnia originated from Taszar with troops flying into Taszar and convoying to Bosnia. Now that there is an airfield in Tuzla, the Taszar facilities are not needed.

Typical issues that a comptroller would faces include reviewing the funding request to determine availability of funds and the proper color of money. Particular attention had to be paid to funding for construction projects and supplies with a unit or system cost of over $100,000. At that time, the capital expenditure threshold was $100,000; now this amount is $250,000.

The Operations and Maintenance funds were provided in the form of CONOPS funds from USAREUR. It was important to properly account for these funds. To achieve this purpose, they had a JARB (Joint Acquisition Review Board) at Taszar to consider and approve the expense as well as decide to compete the requirement using competitive procedures or to sole source the requirement to Dick Cheney's Brown & Root under a marked up cost reimbursement contract. In many cases, Brown & Root had the fix in by lobbying the JARB members to vote for them.

So, there. Everything you need to know about comptrollers and Taszar, Hungary for much less than $6, however, I believe what I said is worth more than $6.

This book has the worst table of contents that I have ever seen. You need to be an insider to understand it; but, if you are an insider you don't need this book.

Why is the table of contents do important? This is a reference book designed to help budget officer prepare better budgets. It would be the rare user that attempts to read this book cover to cover. Most users want to review a particular award criteria. With such a poor table of contents, the user must thumb through the entire book to find the section desired.

This is the only GFOA book I have considered sending back. I would recommend that users find an other community than has recieved the award and ask for copies of their budget. The really serious budget officer should become a budget reviewer and recieve budgets free on a monthly basis.

I gave this book a second star since I do use it when needed and it has helped. It does provoke me to curse about the table of contents each time I use it.

(GFOA: please note that this book has a section on preparing the table of contents. Read it.)