DeWayne

Very Poor Material

Reviewed: 05-20-23

Let me start off by saying that I have an MBA and I am a doctoral student of business administration, conducting my dissertation on the balance scorecard, of which this book does cover, but only for exactly 73 seconds. I am therefore reviewing this book from the perspective of an expert in the field.

This book reads like a glorified job posting. It is random and explains nothing in depth at any point. It bounces from telling users about complex financial accounting formulas that there is no way an unfamiliar listener will learn, to the other extreme of telling users to not use the mouse when using Excel, and what color to use for their fonts, I don’t know how it’s possible that this thing is sitting with over four stars. That’s clearly spam. And in places, the English is forced as through a translator. I remember one sentence saying “a storm” where the “a” sounds misplaced.

If it had been written this year, I would have assumed it was written by ChatGPT 3.5. That’s not a compliment.

The book starts out by saying that a management accountant is only likely to be used only by very large corporations, which is true, and then proceeds to spend 2 hours disagreeing with itself, describing stories of small contractors bent over the home computer, but apparently hire their own IT people, while doing all of their balance statements in Excel, while at the same time telling those contractors to “link” sections together. What a mess!

And so I can’t tell you who this book is written for, except to scare small company owners into hiring somebody who already understands this material, yet would never buy this book.

Just describing something like a WACC and NPV properly would take the length of this book, and so I can only feel more the fool for purchasing it. It barely explains, for instance, what a cost of goods sold is, COGS, which this book refers to. It will neither help you if you don’t know, and you are far more educated than the material in this book, you do know and are not helped further by the book.

I briefly browsed the accompanying PDF, and it looks like a reference manual. This is not management accounting for dummies. This isn’t even management accounting for experts. This is management accounting for someone who only wants to read the introductory paragraphs of some major points within accounting, and come away knowing less.

For instance, the 73 seconds of the balanced scorecard does great injustice to Kaplan and Norton, who came up with the balanced scorecard in 1992, and for which there are numerous stories, anecdotes, and well-known companies to reference. In fact, much of the jargon that makes no sense in this book to the average listener would have been better spent listening to 2 1/2 hours on creating a balanced scorecard and proper KPIs. That includes professionals, amateurs, and experts in accounting and management.

It would have been salvageable, if in every area, they simply would’ve given some great tips and tricks for reading the reports by their existing accountants with an eye for what to look for, or questions to ask. Instead, it just leaves the reader confused.

Unfortunately, I find no area in which this material is salvageable, and I can only feel pity for the book narrator, who had to read this mess. I will be asking for a refund from this and another book by this author I purchased at the same time.

Truly horrible.

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Wouldn’t be bad, except…

Reviewed: 02-27-23

Wow, talk about hard to listen to. I feel bad for the author, as half his success name drops are heading to prison.

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3 people found this helpful

Historical Conspiracy Theorist

Reviewed: 11-30-22

If there was a 20th century of doom and gloom, blame-isn’t, Ben Shapiro prototype, rhetorical conspiracy flirting, “The fall of Russia explains much”Jordan Peterson prototype, spiritual downfall-ist conservative, then it is most characterized in James Burnham in Suicide of the West. We are, in fact, still here, and the existential crisis of decline has not come from liberalism, but illiberalism and fascism. History has always spoken, and Burnham’s hyperbole of “suicide” is partly to blame for current problems.

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Good Reading

Reviewed: 11-23-22

Adam Smith is naive, antiquated, and an Englishman with an inflated sense of moral superiority over native peoples, perhaps the ethnocentric justifications of a colonizing citizen.

But the reading is good. This is a look at morality before even Freud incorrectly tried to unravel the mind and far before modern science dispatched with the will. The benefit here is to listen to some of the best 18th century rhetorical and unscientific musings about what we would call sociology and behavioral psychology. The medicine of the time still used blood letting, so one can’t judge too harshly. However, the real sentiment is that of “why do 18th century British feel they are superior?” And in that, the ideas are amusingly childish, but insightful.

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Well Delivered Poor Content

Reviewed: 10-19-22

The rhetorical arguments here are to psychology, rigorous social science, and behavioral science as Freud is. Anecdotal, straw manning, cherry picking, and large broad assumptions that fail to be historically formed, scientifically informed, or even morally informed.

Many of the concepts here have been scientifically debunked already, and leaves this work as a collection of null hypotheses of an alternative universe in which caste systems both don’t exist or are too complicated to study, of which the author presupposes either depending on the topic as it suits their case.

Startlingly unacademic, pedantic, and even cruel callousness when speaking of the cost of educating special needs and the disabled.

Sowell paints a cold and cruel world in which anything other than personal empathy is social weakness. One finds less cynicism in Machiavelli.

Overall, loved the delivery of the narration. But Thomas Sowell comes across as a child who was never loved, and used the resentment of this to fuel an anger towards a family who may used social programs. It is a book where bitterness is mistook for academic thinking. It is Socrates, with a chip on his shoulder, and resentment at heart to make a world follow only logical rules, which is both a misunderstanding of what humans are, and a naïve understanding of how even the most logical and straightforward rules and norms are applied.

However, I highly recommend reading Sowell. He stands at a minimum as a Devil’s Advocate for social policy and social science rigor.

Sowell isn’t the hero, but rather the foil for current and future work.

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A Refreshing Voice from History

Reviewed: 04-20-22

The authors bring French philosophy alive in an examination of "the good life." I thoroughly enjoyed the personal expositions of the philosophers in ways familiar to the modern reader. One feels the sense of striving for meaning and happiness in their own lives, going from one extreme solution to another, never quite hitting the mark. And the book properly raises the right questions without the presumption of knowing the right answer, but rather examining previous answers, their strengths, and their inadequacies. The book provides an intellectual mirror harder to find in modern philosophy which seems more concerned with inventing and enforcing terminology than original ideas.

Excellent listen and look forward to any future writings by this talented team.

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Shapiro Is No Gibbon

Reviewed: 12-25-21

Even a casual reading of Gibbon dismisses the flawed history this volume pretends to be. This is what happens when a self proclaimed media personality treads into the well worn path of historians. It presents a farcical paper dragon easily run over by muddy pagan chariots.

Revisionist and predictably unserious in its self seriousness.

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This Book Aged Badly

Reviewed: 12-18-21

The book has aged badly much like Facebook's reputation and Sandberg's role in helping bring about an attack on American democracy by pretending to be clueless about what was going on.

This is a book about a story of someone who is extremely privileged with few to almost no obstacles in life to actually overcome. Having reread this book after a few years, I wonder if she spent as much time thinking about predatory ads she was selling as she was about parking spots at the company. The issues confronted in this book are trifles compared to what most average Americans and especially women face.

As many commentators have pointed out, it is also a very elitist view.

For more information, I suggest reading An Ugly Truth available on Audible.

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1 person found this helpful

Snowden Mischaracterization, Fluff 3 Letter PR

Reviewed: 12-13-21

Within the first chapter the authors claim that Edward Snowden leaked information to WikiLeaks and the Russians. I don't think the guardian would enjoy being called either wikileaks or Russian. This isn't just a sloppy (And I believe intentional) mischaracterization, but probably false to any journalist instantly upon hearing who has ever covered cybersecurity.

I have rarely seen such individuals who should be better informed tell such blatant lies that anyone with actual cybersecurity knowledge and experience would laugh these authors out of room.

Moreover, within the introduction in the first chapter, I find these two individuals to simply be PR peddlers for the 3 letter agencies.

As a three and a half decade IT professional myself, you will get far more out of the book sandworm than this PR piece of fluff PR. The fact that it takes them discrediting origin analysis before seemingly grudgingly admitting NotPetya' Russian source, let alone seeming to fear naming the GRU...

If you wish the private industry to work with the government, I suggest you don't start that conversation with lies and half truths.

Not to push any conspiracy theories, but every security firm and antivirus research company in the world disagrees with major points in the opening.

I may finish the book, but only because I'm now interested in what you won't say. I hope such ilk cloaked spokesman for the three letter agencies know that this is what they often sound like when they show up to security conventions. I am sure there is an official company line for maintaining the BS, but it's pretty blatant BS guys. We all pretty much know you're lying. Now you're lying in print several years after the fact and after multiple documentaries explaining to the public that what you just said is a lie.

It's kind of pathetic to keep the lie up at this point.

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Timely

Reviewed: 09-30-21

This book is both timely and inoculation to the manifestations of fanaticism and manipulation in the modern world. Academically supported, interesting stories, dives deep without tiring the reader at all.

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