I have been using this book for an Intermediate Accounting class that I have to take as a pre requisite for a Master's degree. Even though the book is quite complete in explaining accounting principles it is unecessarily wordy and extremely heavy.

The first five chapters (220 pages) provide a review of what accounting is, the accounting information system, the income statement and the balance sheet. Most of the what is written here is either too basic or will be later found in the remaining chapters of the book. These pages could be easily removed without sacrificing the remaining contents and the understanding of accounting.

Later chapters, however, are also wordy and take too much time explaining concepts that could readily be understood in a couple of lines. You end up getting tired of reading the same thing again and again.

In the end, we have to pay the price for so many pages. With 1300 + pages this book is the heaviest one I have ever carried around. Many people in my class have to use a wheeled backpack. I sometimes can't understand the fascination of editors in the US for such heavy books. If you go to Europe, Asia, and South America, books are usually thinner and much, much lighter.

I would recommend the book to be offered in a CD Rom (or e text) format. Carriyng my laptop around makes more sense than carrying the book.

This book for undergraduate accounting classes at the junior level was more confusing to me than the comparable book by Kieso et al. The sequence of the chapters is not entirely logical. More advanced concepts seem to be covered towards the beginning whereas some basic chapters are discussed towards the end of the book. It was especially confusing when not covering the chapter in chronological order - too bad that my class's syllabus was not outlined according to this book's chapter sequence. In a different class - when we used Intermediate Accounting by Kieso - jumping back and forth was not a big problem. This book by Spiceland also seemed to be very wordy. Studying by solving problems at the end of the book seemed to work. However, it is more important to know how your teacher designs the quizzes and exams and then study accordingly. On the CD that comes with it, there is a lot of ballast. The quizzes are the only valuable thing, I felt. There is not really a lot of use complaining about its weight - accounting books always seem to be extremely heavy and pricy. But this certainly holds true for this one as well!!! When I tried to resell the book at the university bookstore, they would not take it back because it was selling badly on a national scale. Very frustrating when you paid [$$$] just a couple of months earlier...

This book put me to sleep. It is a very bland book. This is based on the volume one edition chapters 1-14.

I'm a senior in college, and I have read many textbooks by many authors. Through all that studying, only a handful of books have ever stood out in my mind as "exceptionally good" or "exceptionally bad" for whatever reason.

Well, I am sorry to say that this book more than any other has stood out as "exceptionally bad" because of 1) its horrendous, awkward phraseology, and 2) its unnecessarily lengthy explanations of most concepts. Because of these shortcomings, it routinely took me much too long to read even a few pages, and when I was finally finished, I disappointedly discovered that I hadn't even learned that much about international marketing. It's like reading an essay from a student who is just trying to fill up space or impress his professor with length, while compounding his error with poor style.

On the other hand, there is a lot of good information in the text, for which it received a star. There are several charts, black and white pictures, and some supplementary material as well.

I used his book as an MBA student 15 or so years ago. Now as an adjunct professor, I am using this newest edition in my undergraduate classes. Although my observation may be biased, the book is a bit too encyclopedic, a bit superficial in coverage, and fails to excite the students. I wish it were more up-to-date.

I am a Professor of International Marketing and have used this book and the previous editions for 10 semesters. Compared to the competition, this book is definitely the best in the field. It is well written and researched and gives the reader a solid foundation in the major topics of IM. The instructor support materials are excellent and I highly recommend them, particularly the video series. If you are a new professor teaching IM for the first time, the instructor's manual, powerpoint slides, test bank, and videos are a godsend! The Country Notebook described in the book is a great semester-long team project and really reinforces the content of each chapter. I will continue to use this book for a long time!

clearly written by a pair of highly intelligent intellectuals. it is a pity they cannot comunicate.

The authors not only demonstrate their understanding of financial markets by way of the breadth and precision of the topics discussed, but they also present the material in a way that is understandable to even those uninitiated in finance. If you are looking to learn the basic concepts underlying the various markets (equity, bond, mortgage, etc.), and you are interested by the wide range of pricing tools available today, this book is up your alley.

This is one the best introductory textbooks on the subject of financial markets and institutions. It is comprehensive and full of examples and exercises. The authors do an excellent job of presenting complex concepts in a relatively simple and straightforward style. Highly recommended.

My husband and I are shopping around for our home we plan to purchase. My husband is a school teacher and I brought home this book, thinking he could read through it and get a real handle on what we should be doing for a mortgage when we find our home. He found the book very complicated and he said it was overwhelming. I paged through the book, just reading the tips, which I found helpful, but I, too, felt the book was very heavy on facts and information which probably doesn't pertain to the average homebuyer - certainly not us.

We were pre-approved for a loan before we started looking for our home by a very helpful mortgage broker referred to us by our Realtor. He has answered all the questions we had to date very professionally. I showed him the book and he said he had read it and he thought there were some helpful hints in it but he said there were some very glaring errors in it, too. Like one of the other revieweres pointed out, the author makes a monster mistake when he states that most all mortgage brokers are real estate agents. That's not at all true. They are required to have a current Department of Real Estate license (mortgage brokers) but they are not automatically real estate agents unless the author meant that they are QUALIFIED to sell real estate. The vast majority of them do not sell any real estate. They make loans on the real estate sold by real estate agents. It sounds confusing but it isn't. The author needs to correct this. He also needs to scale down the contents of his book so that the average borrower can understand it better.

He should also spend a lot more time denouncing many, if not all, of the lenders who advertise on the highways and freeways with their big electronic billboards advertising interest rates that absolutely do not exist. He should devote an entire chapter to this unethical practice which continues. unabated, as I write this review.

I called one of those lenders this afternoon because they offered a rate which was better than my mortgage broker offered. I found out that what they advertised wasn't even close to what they were quoting. The agent there told me the billboards were malfunctioning. I suggested they turn them off, then. His comment was, "we spend too much money on them to turn them off." Robert Irwin, get on this scam now. Do a whole book on it.

First off, if you just want to buy a house and not deal with much, find a good broker (of course, that assumes you can find a good broker) and set them loose with specific requirements.

This book is more worthy of people who want to learn more about mortgages and save themselves anywhere from 1000 to 5,000 dollars on average. More if you really dig but this isn't the book for big saves in real estate.

Irwin will take you through all the various steps in

(1) figuring out your credit rating and what you can and cannot get with it;

(2) different types of mortgages and which ones to use;

(3) how to figure out your payment schedule; how to not get in over your head;

(4) the little costs for escrow and banks and other costs; some of which you can have removed;

(5) dealing w/ a broker;

(6) various loans to seek out, including govt ones;

(7) dealing with the seller; and

(8) how to make sure you don't get ripped off.

Overall, this is a great book for the first time investor or someone who wants a home and wants to save a few thousand dollars (or more). Not worth your time, as it's too complicated, for those who want to spend little time learning about it.

The most complete book I've ever seen on hunting for a mortgage. It explained in detail all my options. It even gave me a list of different types of mortgages that I could get and where I could get them. I found it invaluable in getting a lower than market interest rate mortgage from a mortgage broker. (Who cares if he was previously a real estate agent or not-see earlier reviews!)

You will not learn Spanish with these tapes. They move far too fast. Difficult words and phrases are only given once. You will be very disappointed if you buy these with little or no previous knowledge and expect to learn anything.

I can't comment on how this course might serve as a refresher since I'd have to finish learning and then forget Spanish before I could comment on its merits as a refresher course. :)

If you have some background in Spanish, and just want a review, this would be a good tape. However, even with 2 years of Spanish it moves much too quickly. Many phrases do not have time to repeat in the time allocated, the Spanish speaker is speaking much too quickly and the words are not intrepreted into English once one phrase is given several sentences back. I would be completely lost if I didn't already have some background in the language. The Spanish words and phrases need to be broken down and spoken more slowly and with a chance to repeat them on a word by word basis the first time they are used.

I liked this course, though I have only used the 4 "On the Go" part of the 8 CDs. It works out OK to bring the book and CD on the train. From around class 20-25, one has to go back and check the previous class a lot, because the pace is pretty high. But that is OK with me.

Hello, If you are looking for a paperback version for the hardcover book with the same name, this is not it. Actually the ISBN Number belongs only to the Study Guide to that book. I got it shipped and I am really upset about that.

I used this book for my international economics undergraduate course and found it easy to understand; it doesn't use lengthy mathematical formulas but utilizes basic macroeconomic theories. The authors organized this book well; the later chapters build upon the beginning ones. However, it would be best to have taken Intermediate Macroeconomics before using this book because the last few chapters rely heavily on a good understanding of intermediate level material.

Doesn't get too technical, but explains everything clearly. This book is one of the best economic books that I ever used.

I picked up this book as a preparation for the CLEP marketing exam. While it is easy to read, the layout is cluttered and distracting. The authors give a rah-rah treatment to e-commerce, presenting multiple .com case studies throughout the book (each chapter begins with an internet site and description).

It is clear that the authors were infatuated with the so-called "new economy," and the book suffers a lot as a result. Using it as a primer is tiring, as you have to separate the essentials of marketing from the e-commerce cheerleading.

The publisher's website does have quizzes to test on the material, which I like, but overall, I was still somewhat disappointed.

I purchased this book as a primer on Marketing, as a preparatory resource for the CLEP Principles of Marketing exam (3 semester hours). The book effectively presents the basic terms and ideas in an airy, easy to read manner. Also, the book's website contains quizzes that help reinforce the information, which is greatly appreciated.

However, I was somewhat disenchanted with the content which reaches for a "futuristic" flavor and misses something in the process. In my opinion, the book concentrates too heavily on .com companies (some of which are now bankrupt and defunct) and gives an overall rah-rah treatment towards e-commerce. Anecdotes abound and are used as filler in the main text, instead of informational sidebars. Every chapter is introduced with another website URL emblazoned across the top of the page in a putrid yellow color.

Thankfully, the authors did include a paragraph or two dissuading the reader from using SPAM (unsolicited email marketing), but it was a footnote in an otherwise verbose volume. I was somewhat offended that from the context of those paragraphs, and an anecdote about one company's 12% response rate (versus 1% for direct mail) which is misleading and would probably leave marketing students thinking that spam was effective.

For what I purchased the book for, it accomplishes the goals, albeit in a verbose manner.

I used this book as an introduction to marketing at the School of Management at Syracuse University. I found the to be thought out well, layed out in a logical format and it was current with all information. It was more interesting than most text books.

Why can't American Marxists leave Marxist interpretations to Frenchmen? Tbey are much better at it.

Irwin Wall's book on American relations with France during the Algerian war of independence is a sequel to his book on how America supported (and manipulated) France during the Fourth Republic. It is not as interesting as that book, but it provides a workmanlike overview of the problem. It shows the Eisenhower Administration in its best light (it has much less to say about Kennedy). Overall Eisenhower was an intelligent man, much more so than was thought at the time, and he was personally decent, in striking contrast to most of his successors. But his administration was deeply unimaginative and unsympathetic and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, was extremely narro-minded and dogmatic, very bad qualities for a diplomat. Notwithstanding these problems, the Americans soon realized that the French could not suppress the FLN and that ultimately autonomy and independence were inevitable. Here Eisenhower and Dulles are in their best light, tactfully offering advice to a French government that will not lessen, not (for once) being hoodwinked by the claims of the French to be fighting communism, and making their own contacts with the FLN. They are properly angry over the British-French-Israeli aggression at Suez, and understandably disturbed over the French attack on Sakiet, Tunisia, where it is not clear whether the army or the government is in control. Given the unreliability of the government they decide that it would not be that bad an idea for De Gaulle to take power and inaugurate the fifth French Republic.

Much of this book narrowly reads the available diplomatic materials and often reads as a paraphrase of rather inconclusive discussions between the Americans, the French and the British on such questions as Algeria, trying to revamp NATO to increase French power (unsuccessfully), and the question of a French nuclear deterrent. Wall does have an important new thesis: in contrast to the hagiography around De Gaulle, he argues that the president did not in fact plan in 1958 to eventually give Algeria independence, but in fact wanted to keep it as French as possible. Unfortunately for the reader, the book is more than half over by the time he encounters this. The thesis is interesting and is certainly plausible; De Gaulle did appear to wish to cover Algeria in new euphemisms for dependence. And if true, it would mean that De Gaulle prolonged the war with worse results than if the government had stared down the military rebels in 1958. Still it is not definitive, since De Gaulle spoke different things to different people. Wall's verdict on De Gaulle's foreign policy is largely negative, since he achieved very little. Wall does make the interesting comment that by concentrating on the prestige item of nuclear weapons, De Gaulle failed to modernize conventional forces which would have made France more effective in a post cold-war Europe. One problem with this book is that Wall is somewhat repetitive. Another, and more serious problem, is that one learns relatively little about the partner in America's negotiations. The contrast with Walter Lafeber's The Clash on Japan, or Piero Gleijeses' Shattered Hope on Guatemala, or Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie on Vietnam is striking. There is some interesting information on France; there is much less, however on Algeria itself.

The material is well researched & the story is told with tightly reasoned clarity & in lucid prose. The specialized subject is covered in great depth, and Dr. Wall's backward look at the events of the late 50's & 60's is of great help in sorting them out. Their interest is further enhanced by contemporary tie-ins such as the Arab world & the Middle East today, & by their association with the American tragedy that was Viet Nam. I particularly enjoyed the analysis of motivation & intent of the western politicians & de Gaulle. The irony of all that careful planning & diplomacy, which came to nothing, yet, everything seemed to work out for the best anyway. So de Gaulle appears a seer & it's better to be lucky than smart.

Some interesting ideas about mythology, and some fine writing, are ruined by sloppy scholarship, wishful thinking, and general nonsense. The author either can't understand, or misrepresents, basic scientific thinking as well as Julian Jaynes, Noam Chomsky, Richard Leakey, and Charles Darwin. Thompson is obviously sharp enough to understand his primary sources -- and I'm afraid that he selectively quotes things out of context as well as setting up straw man fallacies. Meanwhile Thompson treats Edgar Cayce's past-life experience claims seriously. This book was highly reccomended and I was annoyed to find that it was new age hooey. For works on the psychology, sociology and history of myths stick to Cambell and Frazier

thompson is so dazzling a writer that, even when you don't agree with some of his conclusions, you are nevertheless thrilled to be taken along for this intellectual joyride through prehistory and myth. half the fun is the argument that this book will most assuredly start with yourself. new age mystic or not, thompson will forever change the way you perceive your world, in challenging many things you have previously taken for granted: patriarchy, sexuality, gender and identity, religion. literate, passionate, and eccentric--this is one of my favorite books.

Thompson takes us on a rollercoaster ride through the origins of culture, sex, agriculture and patriarchy.He does not solely rely on left brain abstract thinking, but has got the right side of the brain working too.In other words, he is into mythopoeic thinking, which gets down to deeper levels of existence.If for nothing else, this book is worth it for the sentence "Myth is the history of the soul."There is much wisdom in this sentence.Thompson has more insightful things to say about myth than many other writers on the subject.If he has a fault, it is a too wide sweep over his subject matter.Nevertheless, he has many challenging ideas to confront us with.

Please, no one buy this book... it will torture you like nothing else can. This book actually deserves -5 stars for how terribly written it is. The authors seem to repeat the same sentences in 5 or 6 different ways. It is poorly organized, it doesn't seem to have any real objective... a little bit of this here and a little bit of that there. Also, it is completely black and white with absolutely no pictures and very few illustrations... it will be of absolutely no help to a visual learner.

I needed this book for a governmental accounting course in college and when my bookstore wouldn't buy it back from me I wept tears. Luckily, my governmental accounting professor was really good otherwise there is no way I would have learned anything from this course. If you can possibly find some other book or maybe a newer edition would be better. The only somewhat helpful thing about this book was the City of Smithville project (CD-ROM) but even that had problems. It had a lot of technical difficulties and if you messed up an entry you pretty much had to start the project all over again. If you are doing City of Smithville, beware!

I purchased this book to study for the FGFOA exam and have found it to be an outstanding reference. The book is very readable and covers many critical areas in governmental accounting and finance. Its well worth the cost.