A book that takes frequently complicated financial concepts and makes them accessible to a general readership.
Money takes center stage in Gatchell’s informative guide to financial matters both big and small.
Knowledge is power. That’s the premise of this fact-filled book. With chapters on topics including earning money, spending money, credit, and financial goals, Gatchell covers a lot of ground. Within those chapters are topics that anyone can benefit from knowing more about: employment, taxes, earnings, education, savings, interest rates, payday loans, first cars, first homes, and navigating retirement, among many others. Gatchell doesn’t stray too far from the basics, and he often sticks to the fundamentals. The chapter on earning money, for instance, explains what wages and salaries are, what to expect from a W-2, and the basics of interest. Many chapters include helpful recaps and checklists to confirm your basic understanding of the material. The book has charts and numbers, but only enough to be useful, and personal case studies are nice companions to the nitty-gritty information Gatchell presents. The beauty of Gatchell’s book, unlike so many other financial guides and handbooks, is its simplicity. While Gatchell doesn’t offer much in the way of extraordinary new insights into financial matters, this is a great primer for anyone dipping their toes into deep financial waters. The author takes complicated topics and boils them down to the essentials, taking daunting subjects and presenting them in an unintimidating format. The well-thought-out graphics support the text rather than muddle it, and though the book couldn’t be called comprehensive, it certainly presents a myriad of topics that will be relevant to many readers. Gatchell’s book should be a hit in the classroom, a fine text for any basic financial literacy class. Whether readers are buying a car, trying to finance an education, or looking toward retirement, Gatchell’s handy guide will help them navigate those often-treacherous financial waters.
A book that takes frequently complicated financial concepts and makes them accessible to a general readership.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2023
ISBN: 979-8986720029
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Four Gifts Publishing
Review Posted Online: Feb. 13, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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