Agencies

A poorly thought-out attempt to resolve the many questions which still hang over the Pueblo incident. Surely there is still a tale to be told here, but not by an author who displays much more imagination than research or thoughtful analysis. His lack of knowledge of military affairs, diplomatic history, and North Korea could all have been compensated for with a lot of research. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have attempted this. By his own admission he didn't even try to interview most of the principles and clearly didn't bother looking into relevant issues such as possible reasons why North Korea might have seized the ship.

Even if there were some sort of sinister conspiracy along the lines of what the author is suggesting, he doesn't do much to prove it. His evidence is often along the lines of "three men recalling a traumatic incident several years after it happened differ on some of the details, so somebody must be forcing them to lie." Compounding the fundamental problems of logic which this book suffers, it is very poorly written. This is especially disappointing considering the author's background as a journalist and author of several published books. I'm not in any hurry to read them.

While still in the service, I kept running across references to the capture of the Pueblo by the North Koreans but could find very little in print about it. Being only 7 years old at the time of the incident, I vaguely remember it occuring. When this book was published in December of 1988, I jumped at the chance to delve deeper into the mystery of this oft cited seizure. When I got it, I was disappointed for 2 reasons. First, the thrust of the book propelled the ship (and it's crew) into the '60's twilight zone of conspiracy theories. Don't get me wrong, I feel that some elements of our government are capable of the alleged charges (and worst) but I was looking for more of a straightforward account of the incident. I guess I should have heeded the subtitle ("A Covert Action By The National Security Agency") a little better. My bad. The second thing was that there were only 3 pictures (2 of which are contrasting North Korean and Chinese uniforms!!!) and 2 maps throughout the entire 294 page book. No pictures of the ship, none of the individual shots of the crew that I've seen printed elsewhere, not even a lousy diagram of the layout of the decks. While I gleaned some important facts about the event, I feel that the ultimate Pueblo book has yet to be written. I was going to purchase Mitchell B. Lerner's "The Pueblo Incident" (April 2002) book but after reading the reviews, I guess I'll wait until Richard A. Mobley's "Flash Point North Korea" comes out. At least he's qualified to write about the subject (which is more then I can say for Liston and Lerner).

While trying to unravel much of the bane of mystery still hanging over the Pueblo Incident the author embarks on an extraordinary conspiracy theory that becomes more and more difficult to lend any credibility to as the readers moves through the book.

Robert Liston is a prolific writer who has written on just about every subject under the sun. He leans mightily toward the left and has written several books that are very apologetic of communism and the former Soviet Union. He uses his background as a writer and journalist to write a historically accurate but mostly conjectural account of what might have happened that fateful day in 1968.

His theories are not readily plausible and his lack of objectivity is quite obvious. He admits he did not interview most of the crew of the Pueblo or many of those involved ashore during the crisis. He does quote other conspiracy theorists at length and the reliability of his work goes downhill from there.

For a fanciful look into what may have happened all those years ago, this is a fairly good read. For those who have studied the Pueblo Incident in depth, it is a bit of fun, for anyone just beginning to read about it, read something else first...please. Begin with newspaper articles from 1968, not this particular work. A quick review of the news from back then and the so-called objective writing of Mr. Liston will show the level of credibility this work deserves or doesn't deserve as the case may be.

It is very clear that the author has no degree in marketing. This could have been titled "Marketing Strategies for your Newspaper Route" and geared toward 10 year old entrepeneurs. The author advises against double sided brochures (too complicated for her). Any marketing knowledge that you currently have is certain to be more than what this book offers.

It is obvious that the author has no background or degree in marketing. You may learn that you need to smile when you greet a new client. Marketing tips: put flyers on windshields or double-sided brochures are not advisable (they are too complicated for the author). This is a great book for any 12 year old entrepeneur.

Any marketing knowledge that you currently have is probably 5 times more than what this book has to offer. This book should have been titled "Marketing Your Newspaper Route" and geared towards 10 year olds. I want my money back.

This book might be a lot more helpful if it were updated regularly. The current--third--edition is from 1986, which is ludicrous with subject matter this volatile. The content itself is a bit too brief, but would still be very helpful if it had been done some time in the last 1-5 years.

This book was not enlighting, alot of the information was out date. The phone numbers to the locations were disconected etc.

This book has information on many goverment agencies, but does not have specific locations on how to get it as an individual.

This is a truly horrible book. It's written so poorly that the only way it can be used is as a look-up reference. If you don't have a really good instructor for Not-for-profit accounting, find one using a different book. You won't get much out of this.
The 7th Edition is just as bad as the 6th.

If it was possible to give this book a negetive star review I would. It has no organization, no structure, and makes no sense. It is by far the worst text I have ever had to read. Although the author is a professor, he must be a very bad one. He has no grasp on how students learn, and makes no attempt to link information together. He uses the same example throughout the entire text. As if in chapter 9, you rememeber what entry 14, is in chapter 3. A horrible book. It is easier to read the GASB statements than it is this book. DO NOT BUY IT!!

This is the assigned text in a correspondence course I am taking through LSU. I've taken several college-level accounting and mathematics courses via correspondence, and I generally don't have trouble learning from a book.

That being said, this is not an appropriate text for self-study. It is unnecessarily wordy and has few examples or visual aids, the lack of which makes the new concepts difficult to grasp. After looking up some of the referenced GASB pronouncements myself and creating some of my own visual aids, I found the material was much less abstruse than the book makes it out to be. If you are assigned this text, you may as well do the same.

I concede that this book is useful as a reference; it is a good compilation of (as the title says) the essentials of governmental and not-for-profit accounting. But with only a little effort, you can obtain the relevant GASB and FASB pronouncements free from your local or university library. As a learning tool, this text offers nothing.

As a consultant to many franchisors, I am aware and have used most of the books on the market. I found the contact information very poor. In most cases, it would'nt give a specific name of who to talk to while many of the other books and web sites do. For more great information on Franchises, one should check out FranchiseAmerica.com

This book was lacking in many areas. The definitions and explanations about franchising were often vague and incomplete. The topic of capital (about the most important part of franchising) was amazingly unclear. It was not ever mentioned exactly how much a person would need of their own funds vs. loans received from a bank. All 4 of the main Franchises I was interested in were not in the book, and the disclaimer in the beginning about why they weren't there justifies any omission. The book was just of no help to me whatsoever. I returned it.

This book appears as though it was written very generically as the template of a series about starting businesses, and then customized only slightly by the individual type of business. There's a lot of talk about how to select a computer and what kind of work ethic you ought to develop, bookkeeping, and even an entire chapter about choosing the right business! One would think that by the time this book is in hand, that decision had already been made. A disappointment.

I am looking to set up an employment agency in my professional field of expertise, where I know that there is a big gap in the market. I already run my own business so I was looking for help in starting up an EMPLOYMENT AGENCY, not in setting up a business. This book could be retitled SETTING UP A BUSINESS IN USA. There is a lot of content on setting up a business and very little specific to an employment agency. This book has tried to be everything, and fails by not being specific. A big thumbs down for my purposes.

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I purchased this item hoping to expand my knowledge of DIA, since there is little in the way of recently published information. However, this CD is little more than (if not exclusively) a copy of everything found at DIA's website as of about spring or summer 2001. This is literally a reproduction of the website on CD complete with links. Some pages indicate the day the snapshot was taken (i.e. Website Design by DIA's Digital Services Team Updated: Friday, 29-Jun-2001 15:12:49 EDT). In some ways the actual website is better because most of the links are functional. For example, the CD does not allow you to successfully click on the link to "Video Vault" or to the audio from the recent radio interview with DIA Director Vice Admiral Thomas R. Wilson (it does contain the written transcript, but so does the web site at the time of my writing). I did an initial check and found that most (if not all) documents on the CD concerning high-profile issues such as UFO's, Lockerbie, etc. can be also be found within DIA's freedom of information act pages. The pro to the CD is the very high resolution images it contains, which I'm sure would be great for a presentation. However, I'm sure the ones made public on the web would also suffice. If you can't read some of the unclassified documents which you download from the website, they may not be any better on the CD. Some are still completely unreadable regardless of the resolution and magnification you select. This CD is produced by Progressive Management, which to my knowledge is not affiliated with any government printing office. I give this product one star because of its high quality images, but it otherwise does little to add to the public material on DIA. You should know that you're basically purchasing a web site on CD.

This CDROM contains a copy of all the pages on the www.nsa.gov website as it appeared sometime in the recent past. It contains nothing more, nothing less. If this satisfies your needs, then go for it. If not, then simply use your webbrowser to view the website directly.

Also, this "book" is not published by the U.S. Government, it was compiled and published by a company known as: Progressive Management.

kjh

As an avid history freak with a huge personal collection of history books, I was totally seduced by the subject (and the editorial review) into buying this book. Middle Eastern minorities have always interested me. Boy was this book bad.

... To be honest, I never even got through half of this book.

First of all, the facts on these ethnic groups were so basic that I've actually obtained so much more information for free from websites. Secondly, the style of writing and presentation is too amateurish as if a poor undergraduate history student submitted this as his paper/thesis on his way to getting a "D" grade. In addition, there were many spelling and grammatical errors in the book which one could not overlook. Since the author, Prof. Dr. Burchard Brentjes is German, I would not be surprised that this is due to the shortcomings of his translator.

The only interesting thing about this book is the title.