Westerns Books

After three years of graduate school and two Master's degrees (MPH/MBA)I have to say this was the WORST textbook I was unfortunate enough to encounter. I wish I could get a refund for both the cost of the book and the pain and suffering I endured while trying to read it. If a professor tries to get you to buy this book please say "NO"!

We have used this book for the Accounting II class last term. It is not bad, though a little bit complicated. Since I was with an accounting major in undergraduate, it is not tough for me.

I guess the author is trying to help you to consider the complicated accounting treatment with the underlying business strategy. Meanwhile, probably he assumes a familiarity with accounting basics of the readers.

Overall it is a pretty good text for graduate program I think. Also, you have to pay more efforts to understand it well if without an accounting background.

I like its strategic focus and case-oriented approach. The FSAP is terrific. In this book, financial statements finally found its correct place: describe the strategic decisions made by management. This book is never dry. Instead, it is vivid, fascinating, and a great reading for anyone who is serious with a career in equity research.

I am in an MBA program too. I have to use this book as a textbook for the course, Financial Statement Analysis. I have taken Managerial Financing before and done a very good job on that course. But it doesn't help me a lot to understand this terrible book. It isn't that course's fault. I appreciate that I have taken some financing course before I use this book. I can't understand this book very well totally because this book is terrible. Both textbooks for Financing and this course are published by the same publisher, Thomas?..I couldn't believe how different those two books are.

In this book, Pepsi case keeps confusing most readers. Most equations are not highlighted so you can not find them easily and quickly. Homework is not designed for the students who are studying this book but for the authors themselves. Fortunately, our professor sends his master copy to us. It will help us understand homework more, but unfortunately after we have handed in our results.

If anyone who teaches FSA, please do not use this book as your textbook for your students. Pls, pls, pls..Even though you are an expert on accounting or finance, your students will still suffer from your course and almost learn nothing from this TERRIBLE book.

This book is TERRIBLE. I am an engineer in an MBA program. The book is supposedly for non accountants, but I don't see how it's possible to understand this book if you're not an accountant. If you're unfortunate and have to use this book, find a good book that you can actually read to supplement the subject.

There's a lot mumbo jumbo using technical terms that could be much easier stood with a table and reference to specific numbers in the table. There has got to be a better way to learn finacial statement analysis.

examples in book often have little to do with the subject matter; book couldn't be more boring if it tried.

My purchase arrived very quickly, and was indicated to be a "Used" textbook, yet it appeared as "Brand New". I will definitely continue to purchase future textbooks through Amazon. I saved a lot more money this way than buying books from my college.

I'm in an MBA program right now and still refer back to this book for my intermediate accounting course. I'm a tough judge on books, coming from the UC system, and let me tell you - this is one of the best written textbooks I have ever encountered. Period.

hi i bought 2 books from these people for the first time in the past two weeks and i got the book on time and it was in great condition!
thanks

First of all I paid for 2 days express shipping. The book came after 5 days.Then I did not get your guide to an A which is a free pakage that comes with a new book.The point of buying a new book was just because of this pakage.I am not very satisfied with the service.

Best book so far for teahing accounting. This is the book for learning accounting.

My accounting professor was awful and it was this book that saved my grade in the class. It provides very detailed explanations and summaries of each concept it covers throughout the chapter, not just at the end of the section. The accompanying working papers and study guide were also very informative and helpful.

I can read English, French, Italian. This novel ranks with Proust's La Recherche du temps perdu, and Manzoni's Promessi sposi. Breathtaking scenes follow more breathtaking scenes and the whole leaves the reader breathless. Magnificient, none like it.

I found this book an effort to read. Confusing at the start, yet did grab me midway but I was ready to discard with about 1/3 left, but thought better of it and completed. Yes, his writing is very descriptive and captures the essence of every sense the reader needs to be placed within the story. However, it just seemed to skip and jumble along, the ending wasn't anything like the many my mind conjured up, it wasn't really anything special at all...Grady continued on rambling as did the book. I perhaps need to read another of his works to get a better grasp of the talent of this writer, as so many have applauded his style.

Cormac McCarthy seems to be everywhere right now--Oprah's book club, a recent Coen Brothers film adaptation, one of the top novels of the past quarter-century. I decided it was time to check out his work, since he's considered the modern Faulkner, and a great depicter of the violent and beautiful American southwest. All the Pretty Horses both lives up to my expectations and kind of frustrates them. The novel starts out gloomy with the funeral for the protagonist John Grady's grandfather, turns comedic when Grady and his friend cross the border into Mexico in search of adventure, then shifts into a semi-melodramatic romance, finally returning to a state of pitch-black gloom and despair. All throughout, McCarthy retains a distance from the world of the novel, coldly surveying the raw beauty of the Mexican landscape and stubbornly refusing to enter the heads of his equally stubborn characters. In some ways, this narrative distance works quite well, amplifying the frankness and simplicity that Hemingway is known for. But it also prevents the novel from striking home on any real emotional level.

The most problematic part of the novel is Grady's passionate love for a ranch owner's daughter, Alejandra. The two are a sort of Romeo and Juliet pair, deeply desiring one another, but knowing that their love can never be allowed to flower. The romance, however, is jarringly out of place with the events in the rest of the novel, and feels a little bit contrived. Especially irritating is the lack of insight into Alejandra's character; she is given no more than a handful of lines, and it is never really clear what she sees in run-down, dirt-poor Grady.

Minor criticisms aside, the icing to top off this striking novel, however, is McCarthy's metaphysical musing that underlies all the events of the novel. Most profound is his consideration of the workings of Fate in human activities. One of the best passages in the novel occurs when Grady confronts Alejandra's grand-aunt for the second time. She is determined to prevent him from stealing off with her protégé, but respects him enough to deliver a haunting and thorough account of her reasoning. She expresses her deep frustration with the randomness of life, describing a coin minter who arbitrarily decides which way to press each coin he makes, blindly affecting countless coin flips down the road. She laments the inability of mankind to ever know the alternative course that their actions could have taken; for a history that never sees the light of day, and can never be judged against what actually transpired. Building off this theme is Grady's fascination with the long-dead frontier of the American West. Early in the novel we see him wistfully imagining the hunting parties of the glorious and departed Native American tribes, disappearing in the red light of the setting sun. At the end of the novel, Grady likewise disappears, fading into history like so many movements whose splendor the world will never see.

Adventure, full-hearted love, revenge, the majestic wilderness, and of course horses: the western-movie staples are what moves this novel. Yet if All The Pretty Horses is a classic cowboy story, it is also that of a dying world, and all the more accessible to us that it is set in the post-war era.

John Grady Cole, a young man of 16 years, leaves the country for Mexico together with his friend Lacey Rawlins, both on horseback, in search of a life that has become inaccessible to them in Texas. A cruel but romantic saga of tests and tribulations awaits them - which I won't spoil by giving too much of it.

The dialogues are suitably laconic. The characters are frank and unambiguous, except for one key exception. Nature is reserved the richer, more complex, and admiring language. While the novel begins at a slow pace, making the reader wonder whether this is really a back-to-the-wild story, the action later quickens to a satisfyingly gripping climax. One warning: a good part of the dialogue is in Spanish, untranslated; though this won't throw you off the plot, if you don't understand Spanish, it may get annoying.

I have looked at some of the reviews here, and am a bit surprised as the number of people who hated this book. It is a challenge to read, but this is no "Ulysses." The main themes can be understood with a little careful attention. Some have compared McCarthy's style to Hemingway's but this is not a fair comparision. McCarthy's prose is far more complex. Hemingway wrote arresting prose, but at times his minimalist style was cartoonish. McCarthy is simple the way Picasso is simple -- that is to say, only if you do not look hard enough.

McCarthy's skill with language is unequalled among living American authors. It is the language that is the star of this book, and if you cannot appreciate the language itself the story will not bear the weight. Yes, I found myself re-reading passages and puzzling out the construction of some sentences, but I did it with the same pleasure a sports fan looks at a replay of a spectacular play. This is a book for the patient. Not every book pays off like a James Bond novel.

"Blood Meridian" is one of the few books that has stuck with me for years. Due to the graphic violence, I don't recommend it to a lot of people, and I must admit that it put me off for quite a while at the beginning. That said, it has passed the test of time with me. It is one of VERY few books that I have re-read. When I finished this book, I just had to take a deep breath. I'm not some literature major, or someone who wants to analyze all the symbolism that is obviously present here, but I still found this to be accessible and powerful. The language is magnificent, and the entire book has a "gut level" feel that, while taking a long time to cultivate, is truly unique. I've read all of McCarthy's novels and this is by far my favorite. If you really liked "No Country For Old Men" (a glorified screenplay, in my opinion) and/or "The Road", this book may NOT be for you. If you liked the Border Trilogy, particularly "The Crossing", then buy this and read it immediately. You might also like "Paradise" by Toni Morrison.

Cormack McCarthy is my favorite author and I loved this book. It is typical of his writing. This one is VERY bloody but the story drew me in and didn't let go until the final page.

The Spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone and his contemporaries dispelled most myths of good cowboys and bad cowboys. His influence spread upon others, whose successive cinematic paintings would make the bleak Western desert landscape filled with bloodthirsty ruffians common knowledge to audiences. But while Angel Eyes Sentenza, Tuco Ramirez, and Clint Eastwood's nameless killers were Shakespearean in their amoral aspects, there was still something civil and sane in those men amidst leering Death.

Here, morality is a virtue felt by victims while vice is the religion of the victors. The Americas twisted by Manifest Destiny have interbred the demonized Native Americans and Spanish, and it is almost like they have birthed a new race of devils as savage as their white oppressors. Scalps are the bloodstained market's chief commodity as the roving Glanton Gang murders Native American settlements and sells these items to towns warped in celebrating killers as heroes. The naive worshipful cities soon have their dazzling savage dreams brought upon them when the Glanton Gang sieges them, scalp the innocent townspeople, and in a continuance of falsehoods, sell these counterfeit scalps as the genuine article only for the celebrated sellers to become marauding thieves again.

Almost as an American God of Western myth, Glanton's right-hand man Judge Holden is much like the serpentine deceiver, who is all but named as the martial Pope of the war party. Even when narrated to be lying, Holden's gravitas is utterly inspiring and his scholarly nature and sophisticated vocabulary among almost cancerous nomads on the mind make us want to join in the revelry for him until he murders children and puppies in an act of Heraclitean warmongering in the name of mankind's eventual future as overlord of the wild nature that would restrain him. Virtue in war is an oxymoron, an impasse to man's sovereignty, and all are enemies to him in our fragile plane of existence. Sometimes when we hear of hurricanes and the venomous snakes out there, we want to believe in the Judge's anarchic crusade against nature even though that entails monstrous amorality as treachery to our origins and a sort of ecological suicide brought upon an ignorance that we are a part of nature as much as everything else. But other men neutral to or against the Glanton Gang are also categorized with rampaging nature and as they slay enemy Native American settlements and soldiers sent out to task them for their crimes with flying colors, we seriously start to ask if such bloody imperialism is wrong if it guarantees peace from everlasting supremacy. As natural competitors bent on survival against an overwhelmingly hostile world, it is easy to shatter our moral compass and believe the Judge's lies until our need for violence as a weapon of law becomes a lust for war such as when unlawful aspirants rise to usurp the all too weak natural sovereign's throne and success or failure, this continuing cycle ensures that the world's fauna is only bones and corpses.

The Kid runs from his abusive home at fourteen and eventually comes into the company of these warrior cultists. Even amidst such ruthless combatants, the Kid never loses his goodness as he once pulls out the arrow of a wounded comrade that would have died otherwise. As the closest thing we identify with virtue in a bloody wasteland, he and Holden shine like beacons of opposing forces, more than men, and given the Judge's ability to be in two places at once and immunity to age, we pray the Kid is such an angelic deity to oppose this demon that at times seems little more than a hairless Robin Goodfellow.

In our current era we face a similar dilemma: Zealous glorification of our heroes as stainless statues and hatred of our enemies into mad beasts. We believe the Judge to this day into persecuting all that would dare to walk astray our path. The results have become reminiscent of mythical battles and mutate us into devils dressed in ripped and pasted man flesh upon demonic hides and where most of our fallen kin have learned to hide their cloven hooves in military boots and behind the staggering piles of waste in our shining criminal history. Manifest Destiny still lives. It is our favorite. It will never die.

This is the third Cormac McCarthy book I have read, and my awe for him as a poet is as strong as ever. My awe for him as an anti-sentimentalist is also stronger than ever. Blood Meridian not an exhilarating book based on it's contents. Quite the opposite; It is a haunting and sobering account of a group of despicable men in the West, and all that they partake of. However the style of McCarthy's prose, and his economic use of striking vocabulary are a beauty to behold. Consider it a painting, masterfully composed, but inducing an awful awe and depression on those who behold it.

Blood Meridian is, at its most obvious, an anti-western. It is about all the things that Heroic stories of the settling of the west, and all those outlaws that are idolized, are not talked about. It is about brutality, inhuman (or, how you look at it, all too human) behavior and all the rest of the things that legends are NOT made of. And yet you can feel it is honest. However beneath the Western Motif, it is not just for the West, but for all mythologized things, that the book is making a statement. There have been comparisons of this book to the classical works such as THE ODYSSEY, and I feel that it is well earned. THE ODYSSEY is about a journey, but even when reading that classical work, there are hints of barbarism that the story doesn't stay long on to contemplate. There are acts of killing and slavery in THE ODYSSEY, however that would taint all that we love about the Heroic journey, and so it is not emphasized.

Blood Meridian is, you could argue, the side of the heroic tale that is not celebrated, and yet lurks under it if you are looking for it. With Blood Meridian it is all there, stripped of it's glory. Once you read this book, you will wonder, `was this what it was like? Was Davy Crockett such a brute? Only elevated for what he did for his own people, glossing over what he wrought to everyone else?' I'm not saying that Crockett was a bad man, only that this book serves to illustrate how, perhaps the figures in history who have songs and tales commemorating them, might have only one aspect of their lives committed to history. I believe part of the purpose of this book is to see the Judge as a champion of European values, and triumphing over the Indians and Mexicans. This is not, understand, the part YOU will read in Blood Meridian, I merely point out that the romanticized version of the west, of cowboys and Indians, of the Alamo, are mere interpretations. The grim reality of how those `obstacles' to America's `taming' of the west are perhaps too brutal and horrific to remember. I will personally be haunted by several sequences in this book, and I think that is the point. America was an inherited land, and it took a lot of bloodshed and villainy to make it the place that is celebrated today. Would the Judge, had he been a real man, been sung about in America as a conqueror of wild regions that were a threat to homesteaders? And more to the point, is this idea of Indians attacking settlers not one that goes 2 ways? Who was the first to draw first blood in the West? Should we be glorifying what was a massacre of a less developed culture? It is not something you have to contemplate the way McCarthy does, but if you read this book you will look at the Romantic Western Outlaws in a different light.

There is a passage in this book. It is in response to a man who does not want to be sketched, documented if you will, into the Judge's sketchbook/journal. The Judge's response is, smiling, "Whether in my book or not, every man is tabernacled in every other and he in exchange and so on in an endless complexity of being and witness to the uttermost edge of the world." I am citing this as one of many statements to the reader in this book. You will not like what you read, but you are asked to bear WITNESS to it. I can think of no other explanation to this book. It is one of a kind, and it will not be a
book that you put down and forget. Like me, you will be imprinted with it's imagery for many days after. That is what makes this a great book; it is not necessarily enjoyed, but it is deeply philosophical on the heart of man, and how we as a culture like to abbreviate what barbarity has made our place in the world. Again, this is only my interpretation of one aspect of the book. There is much more to it, and several theses could be written.

Blood Meridian is worth reading if nothing else than for McCarthy's multi-dimensional portrayal of Judge Holden. The judge becomes the nexus where the powerful forces which created the American character, the impulse to control, to dominate, to wage genocidal war in the West, to mirror the refinement and accomplishments of Europe, meet, and the results are mesmerizing. There is a part where the judge, a hefty man, lifts a meteorite used as a blacksmith's anvil and his men wager how far he can hurl it. What McCarthy is saying is clear and disturbing. Here is our American god. Here is the embodiment of our national, historical woes. As the central pivot of this violent, nearly obscene novel, the judge is a perfect creation.

I would have wanted to know that the book had more than ten chapter. I also would wanted to know a little more about the subject before purchase. After I purchase this book I realize that it explains crystal clear all about business communication. I also find out that this book had useful information about business communication for today technology. Explain part by part all procedure to make good reception and open discuss for get better business. I highly recommed this book as reference for people work in Office.

I used this text for an online class and it was just an exceptional experience. I also had the option of visiting the classroom, which was completely out of the picture once I started turning the pages. The chapters were clear and passages easy to follow. The grammar/mechanics handbook section was really great. I have decided to keep this book as a wonderful reference tool. I find myself using it daily to double check certain things for clarification before mailing. I highly recommend this book for anyone seeking a refresher course or an improvement tool for business English. This is money well spent and is worth every cent!

Other books to read for relaxation: Trilogy Moments for the Mind, Body and Soul; Everyday Miracles; and, The Language of Poetry Forms.

I have been reading this book since I received it and so far it is an excellent business tool! Very informative.

The book was in perfect condition, however, it didn't come with the user access code for internet review websites.

I am an instructor for a local college. I selected the Essntials of Business Communication as the textbook for my Business Communications course after working with it in a previous class. It is the best organized text I have found with step by step instructions for students to readily grasp the techniques used in modern business documents. The book covers e-mails, memos, a variety of business letters, reports, business proposals, resumes, letters of application and communication skills for oral presentations and interviews. Lectures, examples, assignments, and grammatical challenges are pre-designed for the instructor's use, making this a turn-key system for teaching communication skills.

"Organization Theory and Design" is a book every corporate member that has aspirations to better understand and contribute to his organization should own.

I used this book studying a basic course of organizational behavior after the professor had referred to it as "the best text on the market". I found out he was right - the book is extremely well-written and its contribution to my understanding of the subject is invaluable.

As it happened, I partly read older versions of the book to find out how every few years Mr. Daft updates his analysis, insights and examples of the ever changing and evolving world of organizations; for instance, the past example of IBM that served as the major opening example of an organization that has gone from the top of the world to the brink of disintegration in the beginning of the 90's (and since then regained leading position in its areas of expertise), is replaced in this 8th edition with Xerox. Mr. Daft continues and presents the most recent developments in organizations' design - structures and management methods that have only emerged lately in response to the turbulences in the environments and competition worldwide.

By making the changes and improvements in every edition "Organization theory and design" wins the title of this review - "the learning book" - that mirror images the main theme of this work - "the learning organization". Almost no organization can stand still in today's reality - managers and workers have to constantly think of better ways of doing things and learn from every source that bears knowledge and can give the organization a better competitive advantage. Things have never moved so fast and threats and opportunities have never been so immense. Competitors have to be efficient and different to survive and stay on the top.

The structure of the book is designed to convey its ideas in the best possible manner: Each and every chapter opens with an example illustrating its content, then an introduction to the subject. Theory and examples from today's organizational world followa and are interwoven throughout the text in the "in practice" section. A fascinating section is "leading by design" in which Mr. Daft highlights top-of-the-line companies that have managed to materialize the theory and consequently lead their industries. Yet another remarkable feature is "bookmark" in which the autohor recommends and actually reviews the content of other books that further develop the subject the chapter dealt with. For me, the magnitude of this behavior is unprecedented; I haven't read a book that is so much interested in advancing and advertising works of fellow authors. This is a code of conduct every author can learn from in pursuing the ultimate goal - to better inform and educate his/her readers.

Some of the material the book covers include the organizational environment, organizational structures, organizational decision making processes, ethics, organization-decline and organizational politics.

As is the norm in many books, Mr. Daft integrates case studies directly connected to the content of each chapter in its end. They add all the more to the reality dimension that is so strong throughout the book.

Lastly, the price of this book is somewhat expensive but well worth the money and will certainly prove to be a wise investment. Years after its reaing and studying it may serve as a reference source when the reader will stumble across situations covered in the book and learn to appreciate even more the lessons insights Mr. daft offers.

I bought this book with the apprehension that it might not be the same one I'm looking for.But Amazon made me feel so satisfied.I got the exact book and that too new and in much lower price than the market.

This is a well-designed and comprehensive book in the area of organization theory. From introduction to the end, this book aims to teach the foundations of organization theory to readers.

There is a great awareness of new developments in the area of organization theory. The new developments such as team-based management models are integrated into the conventional wisdom wonderfully in the book. We are living in a world in which globalization and stiff competition dominates. We name this age as Information Age and corporations need new mentality and practices to adapt to challenging conditions this era brings about. This book presents some new approaches in global competition perspective to readers.

A Look Inside, Bookmark, In Practice, The New Paradigm and Case for Analysis are excellent peculiarities of the book.

Diagrams and other visual characterizations involved in the book give readers a big opportunity to digest topics recounted. Since this book is a detailed investigation of organization theory, you may miss some parts and feel confused. I can recommend another book, that is, Designing Organizations (Robey, D. and Sales, Carol A.), which is a summarized organization theory book with excellent cases.

If you want to understand organization theory with its basic foundations and details, this book is a must. You must exploit the rich knowledge of Professor Daft.

Strongly recommended.

Daft out did himself in this edition of his text. He includes book reviews and company profiles throughout each chapter to illustrate the theories he's describing. I read this for an MA course and found it easy to learn from. I'm even putting the information into practice at work! Not all textbooks are that helpful. *grin*

Application of organization design about Team-Based Structures and The boundaryless Organization.