Business Money Books

Absolutely loved it. Great book. I recommend it to everyone.

This book was very well-written and instantly got me in the mood to reorganize my life! As a stay at home Mom, my husband and I were desperate to find ways to "cut corners." The author makes it very clear in the beginning of the book that she was NOT writing about debt management, investing, saving, etc. This is purely a book about organizing your life, your home, and how to be smart and frugal with things like shopping. It had great insight. I knew before I got this book that it is spiritual-based, and that's exactly what I was looking for too. I wanted a book that also followed my beliefs in the Bible and not simply a worldly view. I think that's a great asset to the book!
Definitely a great buy!

Cynthia Yates' 'Living Well on One Income' is a good read. It has humor, lots of personal examples that anyone can identify with, and it is filled with good tips. Yates challenges our attitudes about money and belongings and encourages everyone to "Waste Not, Want Not."

This book is interesting reading, but to me it read more like a hodge-podge of frugality tips, random anecdotes, and Sunday school lessons than an organized approach to making your money go further. The author is really enthusiastic, and she gives some very accurate and humorous descriptions of the clutter to be found in many homes. But I really had to pay attention to mine the best tips from the book because they got lost in hype, strange personal stories, and religious discussions. Some of the advice in the book struck me as just plain weird, such as to stay away from your microwave because it might explode; to put a bowl of ammonia into a warm oven to clean it (I can just imagine the smell !); to buy food in bulk and re-can it at home (that just sounds dangerous to me); to give someone a year's worth of old magazines tied up in ribbon as a gift. Finally, this book is very religious; there are references to scripture from the Bible inserted into almost every discussion. I don't mind a book on personal finance including some discussion of the spiritual basis of abundance, but I had a difficult time making the connection between the religious ideas presented and the surrounding points, and it just felt like opportunistic preaching to me. Overall I felt this book sort of meandered around without providing any clear direction that would help someone to change the way they think about money. Two alternatives to this book are "Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, and "The Tao of Abundance" by Laurence G. Boldt. In closing, I will contribute my own frugality tip....if you want to read this book, do what I did and check it out from the library so you don't spend any money on it.

More is better when it comes to money, right? "How Much Money Does an Economy Need? Solving the Central Economic Puzzle of Money, Prices, and Jobs" takes an interesting approach, saying that some of the negatives that the economy experiences such as high unemployment, layoffs, and bust cycles are a necessary evil for overall success. A strange sort of wisdom but wisdom nonetheless, "How Much Money Does an Economy Need? Solving the Central Economic Puzzle of Money, Prices, and Jobs" is recommended for its alternative point of view.

After reading this book I realized how fascinating a book can be when it is written by a washington insider like Woodword. Amazing book describes Greenspan, Fed, Whitehouse and the economics and politics behind it in the most lucid manner possible.

Very true in nature expresses very candidly Chairman Greenspan's political manuevering and how Whitehouse makes a non political instituion political.

Excellent and much more interesting to read compared to Mr. Greenspans own auto biography which in itself is a very good book.

The coziness of our nations politically elite always makes for interesting reading. While there are some interesting tidbits throughout, i.e. Alan Greenspans association with Ayn Rand; the familiar names of the politically entrenched and the precarious state of our nation's economic machinations, this book was a bit boring. With that said, there were two things I found fascinating about D.C. life. First, there is an extremely strong current of Ivy League uber-ambition in our nation's capital; along with an extraordinary confluence of academic uber-achievement (PhD's lawyers & double majored PhD's). Second, I didn't know Alan Greenspan, along with his longtime and classy arm-charm Andrea Mitchell, were such savvy political operatives on the so called D.C. cocktail circuit or what a critical role socializing played in the running of our country. Other than that, I was a bit disappointed with this effort.

Among collegiate literature which I have been exposed to, I have found Bob Woodward's Maestro to be one of the most informative and educational. With this simple and easy to understand narrative, I have been taken inside the doors of the Federal Reserve, and have been given a picture of how the FOMC truly operates. I feel more equipped to discuss and express opinion towards the operations of the Fed. Upon the completion of this book, I sat back with a sense of gratification, in my newly acquired, practical understanding of the U.S. economy. Woodward was able to portray Monetary Policy in a sense that really applied to my level of thinking.
With an inside look at the decisions of Alan Greenspan and his role as chairman of the Federal Reserve, I was stuck with a sense of amazement watching this man operate mathematically and politically, still maintaining a sense of pure awareness and concern for the long-term affects of his resolutions. I would definitely recommend this book to any reader in search of a practical and realistic understanding of the economic engine which drives the U.S.

I read this book wanting to be better informed about how The Fed and Greenspan operate, and wound up being nicely informed and entertained. Understanding how banks, the White House and political appointments co-exist in the field of economics, I never thought I would ever use the phrase "hard-to-put-down" in connection with an economics/banking book but this one really did it for me. It is a genuine page turner and definitely Woodward's most underrated and under-discussed books. (No caller mentioned this work during his 3-hour C-Span interview a few months back.) Get your hands on a copy of this book and prepare for an interesting and enjoyable ride. My one complaint: I wish it were longer. Although this book answered all my "Fed" questions, I wished its time track would continue to the present, or perhaps delve a little deeper into the past. But this minor complaint notwithstanding, the book was an excellent and engaging read.

~Maestro: Greenspan's Fed and the American Boom~ is a rosy bit of economic subterfuge heralding Greenspan as an economic saviour when in reality we're paying the price for the Federal Reserve's inflationary scheme throughout the 1990s. If the markets set interest rates, we wouldn't see the vicious cycles of boom and bust, the subprime mortgage crisis, and the housing bubble. But such subversion is always attendant to fractional-reserve banking. A wiser more honest Alan Greespan wrote an essay entitled 'Gold and Freedom' in the 1960s. Therein, he observed: "In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation... The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard." Greenspan intuitively knew this was still true when Rep. Ron Paul of Texas grilled him in hearings before the House Banking Committee.

People can mock the alarmists and goldbugs, but the U.S. Dollar is poised to fall over a precipice of hyperinflation in the twenty-first century. For years, it has enjoyed prestige as the reserve currency of central banks and reserve currency for OPEC exchange, but it is steadily starting to unravel. Too much public sector indebtedness, a 10-trillion dollar debt, trillions in unfunded federal liabilities, and an aging workforce will all point to American economic decline. In the 1990s, almost 65-70% of U.S. Dollars in existence were in circulation abroad. There is no telling how much it is today. The results will be catastrophic if a shockwave hits, and those Dollars come back home in mass. It doesn't necessarily entail a 1929 crash, but it will likely result in economic stagnation where inflation surpasses real economic growth and/or near-double-digit unemployment.

There is nothing special about Greenspan. He had wisdom to get out and find a fall guy in the new Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke. Bernanke will take the hit for his mistakes. Bernanke is afraid to do any needed correction, or surgery in the form of tightening monetary policy, and will continue to prime-pump the economy and foment an inflationary shockwave and economic stagnation. The cure for inflationary woes is always more inflation. It's a melancholy fate, and the market correction will be devastating. His career will be short-lived and he will be the scapegoat. John Keynes, hardly a model economist, was prescient nonetheless when he observed: "By a continuous process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method, they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some....The process engages all of the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner that not one man in a million can diagnose."

"The central bank is an institution of the most deadly hostility existing against the Principles and form of our Constitution. I am an Enemy to all banks discounting bills or notes for anything but Coin. If the American People allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the People of all their Property until their Children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered."
--Thomas Jefferson

Sick of reading titles that are meant to impart wisdom on how I could be a better lady rather than a better business woman, I admit to a certain hesitancy regarding first purchasing amBITCHous... All of my concerns were for naught -- by the time I finished the introduction, Dr. Condren had a new fan.

I've always considered myself an ambitious woman -- but I immediately recognized some of the problems that the case studies in this book exemplified: I've stepped down from taking credit for things I've done, I have felt myself emotionally battered by those who wish to "steal my thunder," and -- goodness knows -- I've battled with the idea that I am a bad mother, woman, person for wanting a career as much (or sometimes more than) my male counterparts.

Just recognizing those conflicts would've made this book a keeper. But by adding tools and suggestions for overcoming them? Like I said... Dr. Condren has a new fan.

-- Nadia Cornier
CEO, COO, CFO, janitor, mother, author and anything else you can think of
Firebrand Literary
[...]

I thought this book was an excellent read and I felt very empowered after reading it. I highly recommend this book for any woman at any stage in her career.

I think the author addresses several issues that women encounter. I really, really enjoyed it and I will pass the word about this book.

Ambitchous is Condren's way of describing the double standard facing women. As she puts it, "Ambitious men are go-getters, but ambitious women are bitches."

Through interviews with other women and her work as a business coach, Condren has developed strategies to help women overcome the fear of being ambitious. She bemoans the fact that many advice books suggest that achieving "balance" requires career sacrifices. Nonsense, she says. Putting your career ambitions first makes you a better person, she argues, because you will be a happier one. "You must regard your deepest career aspirations as unconditionally sacrosanct," she writes.

While the pep talk is inspiring, the real value of this book lies in its concrete tips. She recommends asking for the raise you deserve, claiming credit when it's due, asking for advice from women you respect, and taking regular sabbaticals to make sure you are dreaming big. All of it is great advice.

After hearing Debra Condren interviewed on a podcast about how women undermine their own ambitions, I couldn't wait to read her book. I related to her thesis. Sometimes, out of fear of looking like I have a huge ego, I don't even try to take on projects that I know I'm capable of. In other words, I need to learn how to be a little more ambitchous.

That word is Condren's way of describing the double standard facing women. As she puts it, "Ambitious men are go-getters, but ambitious women are bitches." She illustrates her point with Madonna and Carly Fiorina. Media stories about both of them tend to focus on their faults instead of their accomplishments. (Perhaps we could add Paris Hilton to that list.)

Through interviews with other women and her work as a business coach, Condren has developed strategies to help women overcome the fear of being ambitious. She bemoans the fact that many advice books suggest that achieving "balance" requires career sacrifices. Nonsense, she says. Putting your career ambitions first makes you a better person, she argues, because you will be a happier one. "You must regard your deepest career aspirations as unconditionally sacrosanct," she writes.

While the pep talk is inspiring, the real value of this book lies in its concrete tips. She recommends asking for the raise you deserve, claiming credit when it's due, asking for advice from women you respect, and taking regular sabbaticals to make sure you are dreaming big. All of it is great advice that I plan to incorporate into my life.

And when I'm done with this book, I can think of more than a few friends I'd like to pass it on to.

The data still come in that women earn about 80 cents for every dollar a man earns. 44% of that wage gap can be attributed to WHAT women do (pink collar jobs, taking time to raise children) and a further 18% of the gap was associated with workplace characteristics such as WHERE women work. But the remaining 38% of the wage gap cannot be explained.

Author Condren attempts to teach women skills to bridge that considerable gap. Not since Hardball for Women has someone tried to instruct women how to play the game to win.

The advice covers quite a range, from avoiding self-sabotaging female behavior (submissive, apologetic false modesty) to blowing your own horn, deactivating detractors and saboteurs, acquiring allies, getting coaching and negotiation skills. Landing a job with the right pay can have cascading consequences downstream to the rest of your career, so this is advice you really can't afford to ignore.

I'd say "RECOMMENDED" but I think the right word here is "ESSENTIAL."

In terms of getting organized and taking control of your financial responsibilities, this is virtually certain to be the most important single book you will ever read. It will literally save you a fortune and zero out financial stress forever. The simple changes I have adopted because of this book have made a world of difference in my family finances.

I am not only making this my personal financial handbook, I am teaching my children Cheryl Hosking's system. She has done all the research and testing. You just have to adopt her system. It not only works like a charm, it is easy to stick with the program. The book includes the exact information, including the tracking forms I needed to get painlessly organized.

This book rates an A+++. It takes the pain out of a normally painful task. There is no fluff or hype here. The book is well designed, concise and eminently practical.

If you only buy one book this year, do yourself or someone you love a huge favor and make this the book. It's that good and it's that valuable.

At 38, I realized I had gone from my father handling my finances, to my husband handling them. I was too overwhelmed and scared to get any control for myself. Ms. Hosking's book helped make me comfortable with being in charge of my own finacial future. The "Get To It Budget Book" is easy to understand, and a great way to help you get ahead of debt. Thanks to it, I am thriving on a part time income! Highly recommended for anyone!

This book is a must for anyone that wants to get started with his or her investment portfolio or take it to the next level. The author covers a lot of material and a broad spectrum of investment options in a pretty short space, making sure that the reader understands the basic principles of the investments and a few of the finer points that savvy investors should understand. The book manages to both explain concepts thoroughly and not make you feel like the author is speaking down to you, which is a hard accomplishment to manage. I think that is why it works so well for beginners and also people that are a little more comfortable with financial concepts. I found the book quite easy to understand and that it flowed quite well. I was fairly confident in my investment portfolio, but this book has made me realize that I could be doing a lot more and I am excited to get started.

Fischer lays it out in plain language -- thankfully. I like the way he breaks up the information into sections and shows us options. I feel like this is pretty complete in terms of the important information that I should have, especially as a new corporation. I know plenty of professionals who should have it, too. This is worth checking out.

The author does a fantastic job in discussing the various methods and ways of investing/saving one's money. Unlike many other books, this one does not assume that certain business language is understood by everyone, and goes the extra mile in explaining and discussing all the necessary terms and methods in detail. The examples used can be traced back to real life situations and are presented in a logical and straight-forward manner. In other words, if you are a experienced investor and know your way around dealing with your finances, this book allows for a perfect re-fresher item. Additionally, there are numerous interesting aspects ands ideas portrait in this book about saving and investing even a well-seasoned business man/woman can learn from. If this is your first attempt at investing/saving, this book will set THE most important milestone in understanding how to best make use of your money.

My reason for writing this review is to hopefully save someone from buying this book based on the 5 star reviews alone, as I did. I'm sorry to disagree with the other reviewers, but I am half way through "Saving and Investing" and it has become hard to follow. I am a novice at financial matters, so I bought the book based on the 5 star ratings and reviews that kept saying it was easy to understand. From my prospective if you don't already have a fair grasp of how the investment vehicles he discusses work, then you will soon be scratching your head as the material becomes more complicated. As for examples, Mr. Fischer starts out with a very good one that is pretty easy to follow as he shows how gains and losses occur by changing the scenario a bit. Later he rarely gives examples and by then you can't follow him without already having some background in how the markets work. The book also has a lot of sentences in bold print which I didn't find to be helpful at all.

I have read (or tried to read) a number of "beginner's" financial books, and this was the only one that was both simple enough and comprehensive enough to be useful. Mr. Fischer is a great teacher; he has a real knack for explaining things concisely and precisely. He has structured the book in a completely logical order, assuming nothing. He covers everything a beginner needs to know, including a brief and understandable explanation of how the financial markets and the economy work, what the different investment vehicles are, and how to put the priciples he discusses into practice. He not only explains the what, but also the why of different investment strategies.

Another thing I really liked was the tone - it was not jokey and annoying like so many of the "...for Dummies" books. Though it is written with the absolute neophyte in mind, it is respectful.

I can't say enough about how good this book is! I am buying copies for my children and all my nieces and nephews. I only wish it had been available when I was younger - I think it would have made a big difference in my life.

This is a great book, but you have to keep in mind the do not call laws.

When I purchased this book I was not aware that John Maloof was a top agent for Century 21. I too am working for Century 21 in the State of Connecticut. This book has reitterated the training I've received from my coach and has given me the best ideas to take the next step in focusing on FSBO's! John gives you basicly all the tools you need to excel in your career as a 'FSBO' real estate agent...the websites he guides you to has been a huge help in finding the information needed for many different areas. This book is an easy read and an interesting one that makes you want to finish it quickly and apply your new techniques. This is definitley a book I will re-read and refer to many times. Thank you!

The Real Estate Agent's Guide to FSBOs is by far, one of the absolute best books you could purchase as a new agent. The author give you practical, usable advise without crossing over that "legal" line in the business. He even helps you with the dreaded "cold calls" to FSBOs! This book exceeded my expectations.

A tool that will grow your business. It is as simple as that. As a seasoned mortgage professional, my day to day business centers around top producing agents. I recently bought 10 copies of THE REAL ESTATE AGENT'S GUIDE TO FSBO'S. The books have been given to my top agents as well as agents who have just began. The feedback I have personally recieved from the book has been overwhelming POSITVE. ALL of them have been able to generate more listings by utilizing the techniques in this book. An easy decision for under twenty dollars!

I found this book to be very easy to follow and quite useful. It uses down-to-earth language and doesn't read like a textbook. The author doesn't assume you're an expert, which I found to be reassuring. Useful information even if you employ other sales techniques.

Is well known that Knut Wicksell considered that to achieve price stability is required to track the divergences among the real bank rate and the real physical (capital) rate, in Woodford's book this aim is achieved setting first (Chapter2) trade in a cashless economy with flexible prices, Taylor's or Wicksell rules determines a rational expectations equilibrium path for the economy. Next extends his analysis to incorporate both: flexible and staggering prices, by adapting Guillermo Calvo's model (1983) and includes Erceg et al model(2000) at the end, goes with the analysis of George Evans et al(2001) on learning. Chapter 4 shows the bright result of a careful analysis developed encompassing Real Business Cycles and New Keynesians theories with the John Taylor rule. The basic model of the book is a system of a dynamic IS curve, the New Keynesian curve and the Taylor rule. Next, the rest of the book goes to welfare considerations of optimal monetary policy with a fully specified framework.
The book is a must for economists working at a central bank.

For sure this will become a masterpiece in modern monetary policy. It is very well detailed, and discusses what is really important in the field.

It is already a reference book, and must be read by practitioners, students and academicians interested in the subject.

However the book has the following caveats:

- It is too verbose. That means that you might have the same deepness with less words. As a consequence the reader often gets tired, bored and misses the main point;
- It does not talk about conventional monetary policy as you could find in Walsh's "Monetary Theory and Policy";
- Trying to make the exposition easier, the models are presented in separeted too far apart pieces. This makes it difficult to fully grasp the details at once.

In view of this, I must say that Walsh's book might become a necessary complements to Woodford's. Notice that the styles and goals of both books are different. Therefore, buying one or another depends on your intentions.

In additon I'd say that Woodford's overall strategy is right in terms of the sequence of subjects treated. However, shorter and more numerous chapters might improve the exposition tactics.

It's a most compehensive and thought-provoking treatise on modern monetary economics, an excellent follow-up to Carl Walsh's Monetary Theory and Policy. I think this reviewer who gives the book 2 stars just on account of one technical error that he claims to have discovered is being extremely myopic. The book is not about solutions to stochastic difference equations and neither does the author claim to be an expert at stochastic difference equations. The book handles what it is meant to handle admirably well, i.e. MONETARY ECONOMICS

This book is written by one of the giants in modern macroeconomics. Although a little bit lengthy, the book contains nearly all the recent advance in monetary economics, especially in the interest rate rules and optimal monetary policy. Of course, you should be familiar with log linearization and simple matrix algebra in order to access the mathematics of the book. Woodford¡¦s Interest and prices and Walsh¡¦s Monetary Theory and Policy (2nd edition) would definitely become the required text for every graduate course in monetary economics around the world.

I have been spending the last four months concentrating on Woodford's model of a cashless economy, which Woodford presents in Chapter 2, and which provides the foundation for the rest of the book. I believe his model to be incomplete, relying on a rational expectations precedent of assuming bounded solutions when solving expectational difference equations. A colleague and I have written a paper that shows that this precedent is flawed and we then propose more rigorous procedures. When we apply those revised procedures to Woodford's model of a cashless economy, we find his model is incomplete.

Furthormore, I am writting a second paper that shows that the central bank in Woodford's model is unable to affect the nominal interest rate paid on loans by other entities. If the central bank cannot affect this interest rate, then it cannot affect prices even if Woodford's model was complete.

These are just challenges to Woodford's model which need to withstand the test of refereed journals. However, the potential reader of this book needs to be aware that there are some academics who are challenging the validity of his model. For more details, search for "Woodford cashless economy" with a search engine and you should be able to find my web page that discusses this (...) David Eagle, Associate Professor of Finance
Eastern Washington University
(...)

Actually, there was nothing particularly shocking. The scandal of Halliburton's involvement in Iraq is pretty obvious, and the author adds no information about that. I would guess the more scandalous aspects will come out in the future. When it is clear that we went to war solely so that Halliburton could have the pipeline work, then I'll be mildly perturbed, but not surprised. There must after all have been some real reason.

If one is looking for dirt on Cheney, there really isn't much. He is completely overshadowed in this book by LBJ, Herman Brown, Alvin Wirtz and others, and actually, Robert Caro's books on LBJ are much more enthralling accounts of all that. Still, it's fun to read about these tough Texas mothers with their whiskey and bags full of hundred dollar bills. In fact, now that I think about it I highly recommend all of Caro's books about LBJ.

Coming back to this one, it kind of fizzles out. Halliburton and Brown & Root have interesting histories. People who naively suppose that modern day public officials are honest and that their words are related to their motives in any way may be alarmed, but I would guess that most people reading this book in the first place aren't expecting a tale gleaming with moral gems. And Cheney as a rogue is a humorless dud. The most surprising thing I learned about him was that he had his first heart attack at 37!

It was a good read. Pretty scary stuff. As far as Chaney goes, the only thing that would have been more of a surprise would have been that he was identified as one of the founding members of the Log Cabin Republicans but for someone who spends so much time at undisclosed locations, stranger things could happen.

Bud Brown

Did I get the wrong book from Amazon.com? The book is advertised to be a book about Cheney and Halliburton - it is about Halliburton but not Cheney. For example, pictures of Cheney appear on both the front and back covers of the book jacket. But that is very misleading. The book is not about Cheney per se; there are in fact only a dozen or so pages dealing with Cheney near the end of the book and he plays only a minor role; he finally appears on page 191 of the 237 added seemingly as an afterthought. Surprisingly, the dominant politician in the book is the former president and Texas native Lyndon Baines Johnson or LBJ. By my estimate and it is confirmed by looking at the index, LBJ takes up three times as much space in the book as Cheney, and furthermore he plays a much more important role in setting any "agenda" at Brown & Root - a subsidiary of Halliburton. Even though the book even if falsely promoted it is still an interesting read about two old US companies and their eventual merger; but at just 237 pages long in medium font is not a 5 star effort, just 3.5 stars, maybe only 3 stars at best.

The first company described is the oil well services company Halliburton started in approximately 1920 by Erle Halliburton in Oklahoma. Erle Halliburton died in 1957 leaving a successful and financially strong and independent business enterprise as his legacy. The second company is Brown & Root (B & R) that developed from being a Texas road construction company that was started around 1917 to become a major defense contractor. The business grew through political connections and after many decades B & R had become the largest engineering and construction company in the USA, boosted by the Vietnam war effort, and fed by a series of domestic and foreign construction and defense contracts stretching around the globe.

The book tells (very briefly) how these companies developed, merged in 1962 with R & B being bought by Halliburton, and how they became a major defense contractor. It also contains many side stories such as the influence of the rising political star LBJ in Texas, dam construction, back room operators such as A.J.Wirtz, political intrigue, the milking of Roosevelt's New Deal money, navy boat building, the fall of Leland Olds who was a bureaucrat blocking their expansion, the Johnson Space Center contract, Vietnam contracts, the LOGCAP contract, the Dresser merger, Henry Waxman's congressional charges against Halliburton and the sole sourcing, etc. Cheney appears near the end of the book and I did learn that Cheney flunked out of Yale and was arrested twice for DWI in his youth. There are a number of insights and comments on the current contracts to Halliburton. But since Halliburton had the LOGCAP contract before Cheney, it seems to me that Cheney played no more a dramatic role - I suspect - than any other good CEO or "rainmaker" might have played at Halliburton to boost its revenues.

As a book I would say it rates just 3 or 4 stars since as the author acknowledges that he uses and number of existing books such as "Erle P. Halliburton: Genius with Cement" and other publications, and most of the book is about the older history - as I said Cheney does not even appear until page 191 out of 237. So even when he appears the information is scant. Having said that it is clear the author has done extensive research, he has a nice reference section for further reading, he brings the story together, but overall it seems like a short collection of historical facts and tidbits. As it stands, it is more of a "gateway" book or introduction and it would have been a 5 star book if it was about 400-500 pages long and was more complete. But some of the references and 40 pages of notes at the back are worth a follow up read.

Author Dan Briody has written a book that goes beyond pundit finger-pointing over the controversial "no-bid" contracts relationship between Halliburton and Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a serious examination of the high-octane blend of profit and politics that fuels the Bush administration's agenda. Briody begins with an extensive history of two Texas companies, Halliburton and Brown & Root (now KBR). He deftly portrays how they made their fortunes despite Great Depression hardships, World War II and political intrigues aplenty. Briody pulls no punches while maintaining a reportorial (if not totally objective) tone, although people who hold different political views might argue with his opinions and conclusions. We recommend this saga to anyone looking for a deeper understanding of the ongoing tryst between corporate America and its politicians. While this book is not presented as a smoking gun, it portrays insider politics that smolder like an oil fire you can't quite extinguish, leaving sort of an ugly haze.

I actually enjoyed his book about Carlyle and it's the reason I bought this book. But there should have been another 300 pages. It did a pretty good job of describing the origins of Halliburton and Brown and Root and described the relationship both Brown and Root and later the combined company had with Lyndon Johnson. But it's other political relationships of the time were not fleshed out, and only briefly mentioned. Basically anything about the companies histories after the late 1950s was brief and I felt shortchanged once I got to this part of the book. (3/4 of the way into it) The change of name to Kellog, Brown and Root was not mentioned, nor were contracts such as Guantanomo or the base on Diego Garcia which sounds to me like it could have warranted quite some ink. Also Kellog, Brown and Root's bankruptcy was glossed over leaving me wondering what the story is on this. The asbestos issue was only briefly mentioned, and Cheney's attempts to reduce these losses by changing the laws wasn't mentioned at all. Information about the companies contracts in Iraq is almost non-existant and the reputed contracts the Company did with countries in Cheney's era under US sanctions (ie Iran) by diverting the contracts via it's overseas subsidiaries gets not even a fraction of a page.

Basically if you after information on these companies after 1962 you're better off researching it on the internet.