[[Category:New Reviews|Business and Finance]]__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove -->
[[<!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{Frontpage|isbn=0241636604|title=The Trading Game: A Confession|author=Gary Stevenson|rating=4.5|genre=Autobiography|summary=If you were to bring up an imageof a city banker in your mind, you're unlikely to think of someone like Gary Stevenson. A hoodie and jeans replaces the pin-stripe suit and his background is the East End, where he was familiar with violence, poverty and injustice. There was no posh public school on his CV - but he had been to the London School of Economics. Stevenson is bright - extremely bright - and he has a facility with numbers which most of us can only envy. He also realised that most rich people expect poor people to be stupid. It was his ability at what was, essentially, a card game which got him an internship with Citibank. Eventually, this turned into permanent employment as a trader.}}{{Frontpage|author=Fiona Parashar |title=A Beautiful Way to Coach |rating=5|genre=Business and Finance|summary= So what am I doing reading this book, using this book, and being audacious enough to review it? Truth is I bought it out of curiosity. I was at an on-line launch for the book and Fiona’s description of her Vision Days appealed to me. I wanted to see if there were things in there that I could use with someone I am currently helping / supporting / trying to mentor – without committing them to a full day, which I know would send them scurrying for their burrow. I also wanted to see if I could give myself a Vision Day, to bring me away from their vision and back to my own.|isbn=103211603X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=303091657X|title=Disaster in the Boardroom: Six Dysfunctions Everyone Should Understand|author=Gerry Brown and Randall S Peterson|rating=5|genre=Business and Finance|summary=Boards must act in the best interests of their stakeholders and ensure that they are well-managed and financially secure. This might seem obvious but a series of disasters - some of which have resulted in death or the collapse of a major company - have left interested parties asking what the board was doing. Where were they? Occasionally the boards were unaware of what was happening or they preferred to turn a blind eye, leaving watchers wondering which was worse - ignorance or criminality. The 21st century has delivered some major company scandals but what has happened is nothing new:eurofficeGerry Brown and Randall S Peterson give us a very readable trip through such major debacles as railway mania, the South Sea Bubble and even tulip mania. Over three centuries we seem to have learned very little.jpg}}{{Frontpage|centerisbn=1529393930|httpstitle=Making a Living:How to Craft Your Business|author=Sophie Rochester|rating=5|genre=Crafts|summary=''Starting a creative business has never been easier.'' ''If not now, when?'' I know that I'm not alone in having wondered whether or not I could turn my hobby into a business. There's a lot of motivation to do so: I make more items than we can sensibly use and there are a lot of people who have been delighted to accept what I make as gifts. Selling would offset the costs, which can be quite considerable and it could be fun to do, couldn't it? But where to start? What do I need to think about? Well, the first thing anyone who is considering turning a crafting hobby into a business should do is to read ''Making a Living''.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=suppl_stafl|title=Supply Chain 20//www20: A Clear View on the Local Multiplier Effect for Book Lovers|author=Kim Staflund|rating=4.5|genre=Reference|summary=So, you've finished writing your book and you think the hard work is all done? You're convinced that all you need to do now is get it published and the money will start rolling in? Wrong and wrong again. You presumably wrote the book because you wanted to - and you had a talent for delivering the written word. You knew your subject back to front. Now you're going to have to get to grips with the book supply chain, which even parts of the publishing industry believe to be wrong but it's too difficult to change and no one wants to be the first to try. Then, when you ''finally'' have a copy of the book in your hands, you're going to have to work out how to sell it - because it ''is'' going to be down to you.}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0008350388|title=We Need to Talk About Money|author=Otegha Uwagba|rating=5|genre=Politics and Society|summary=''To be a dark-skinned Black woman is to be seen as less desirable, less hireable, less intelligent and ultimately less valuable than my light-skinned counterparts...'' ''We Need to Talk About Money'' by Otegha Uwagba ''0.7% of English Literature GCSE students in England study a book by a writer of colour while only 7% study a book by a woman.'' ''The Bookseller'' 29 June 2021 Otegha Uwagba came to the UK from Kenya when she was five years old. Her sisters were seven and nine. It was her mother who came first, with her father joining them later. The family was hard-working, principled and determined that their children would have the best education possible. There was always a painful awareness of money although this did not translate into a shortage of anything: it was simply carefully harvested.awin1 When Otegha was ten the family acquired a car.com/cread For Otegha, education meant a scholarship to a private school in London and then a place at New College, Oxford.php}} {{Frontpage|isbn=reed3|title=Why You?101 Interview Questions You'll Never Fear Again (3rd Edition)|author=James Reed|rating=5|genre=Business and Finance|summary=Six years on from the original edition, the book is being re-issued with a bonus chapter entitled ''The Future of Work'' which includes an additional 10 questions. I've come to this some 6 years after reviewing the original book and my life has changed significantly in the meantime. I'm no longer working in middle-management having opted for a down-shift into reduced hours freelancing to enable me to focus on other (not necessarily paying) work. I can therefore relate to the first point made in this chapter namely that independence and flexibility are core skills that employees need to have.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=3110706075|title=Making a Difference: Leadership, Change and Giving Back the Independent Director Way|author=Gerry Brown|rating=4|genre=Business and Finance|summary=''You're not there to run the organisation. You are there to make sure that it is run properly.'' Gerry Brown is passionate about the benefits which Independent Directors can bring to a board - not just a corporate board, but the board of an NHS Trust, a university, a sports organisation or a charity. He'sparticularly keen that there's increased diversity on these boards and feels that this would help to avoid some of the scandals (Oxfam, Kids Company - we're thinking about you) which have occurred in recent years. For this to happen, boards need to have a wider field of people to choose from when they're looking for an ID.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=529343&v3030513025|title=3774&qThe Independent Director in Society: Our current crisis of governance and what to do|author=Gerry Brown, Andrew Kakabadse and Filipe Morais|rating=5|genre=257597&rBusiness and Finance|summary=82628]]Independent Director: ''a job for which no one is qualified'' (''Financial Times'') Independent Director: ''An independent director is a member of the board of directors who (1) do not have a material relationship with the company, (2) is not part of the company's executive team, and (3) is not involved with the day-to-day operations of the company. (Corporate Finance Institute)
<!Gerry Brown, Andrew Kakabadse and Filipe Morais feel that the relationship between the executive members of boards and the independent directors (formerly known as non-executive directors), trustees or governors of organisations is frequently unbalanced. The function of the independent director is to have general oversight of the executive side of the board - INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HEREto spot when and where things are going wrong -but all too often the relationship is too cosy, too antagonistic or the independent director lacks the knowledge and/or experience to understand what's happening or to know how to intervene. Covid->19 has highlighted the failings and weaknesses of leadership and governance and you might be tempted to think that these are extraordinary times and that all will be well once we get back to 'normal' but a pandemic was predicted and modelled in the past and there has been a general failure to prepare for what has happened - and is still happening.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0241453585|title=Banking On It: How I Disrupted an Industry|author=Anne Boden|rating=5|genre=Business and Finance|summary=Anne Boden had an impressive track record in the financial services sector: she had thirty years experience at a senior level including Group Chief Operating Officer at Allied Irish Bank. AIB was in the throes of recovering from the 2008 financial crisis when she arrived and she was one of the first to realise that banks needed to do things differently. AIB thought it was at the cutting edge when it proposed opening a branch which allowed customers to access their accounts via a terminal. Boden took things a step further, realising that customers could access their accounts from their homes: the old branch network, employing thousands of people, would soon become redundant.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=3110641119|title=The Journey Mapping Playbook: A Practical Guide to Preparing, Facilitating and Unlocking the Value of Customer Journey Mapping|author=Jerry Angrave|rating=5|genre=Business and Finance|summary=I had no idea what 'journey mapping' was until I read this playbook but any business that engages with their customers will benefit from reading the book and acting on the contents. You're going to learn how to run a workshop to discover what it feels like to be one of your own customers. At this point, please don't say 'oh (expletive deleted) not another workshop' because this is going to be fun and you're going to be surprised by what emerges.}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=3110641291
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=I frequently meet authors who are struggling to be published by the traditional houses, but when I suggest self-publishing they explain that they don't have the big bucks required to go down that road with Author Solutions or Matador or their like. I then ask if they've considered Kindle and the answer is, inevitably, that they wouldn't know where to start. I can empathise with that. Despite having used a computer for about thirty years, running most of my life ''and'' a website online, I'm still nervous when it comes to starting something new. I like someone to hold my hand as I go through it for the first time. That was why I was very interested when ''The Simple Act of Self Publishing With Amazon'' came across my desk...
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1729621953
|title=Fast-track the I.T Journey - How to move from Supplier to Partner
|author=Alok Ranjan Tripathy
|rating=3.5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=So, what brought me to this book? As the owner of a small business and a buyer of IT services I should be the senior partner in the relationship with my suppliers, but I've frequently found myself the junior partner and I've regularly been let down by them. I needed to know where I could improve that relationship and, by looking at the situation from the supplier's point of view, what steps I needed to take. Alok Tripathy's book looked as though it might provide help and possibly some of the answers as to how my suppliers could better help me.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1789552354
|title=Storytelling: The Presenter's Secret Weapon
|author=John Clare
|rating=4
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=I was a little bit nervous when I picked up ''Storytelling: The Presenter's Secret Weapon''. After all, the majority of presentations which I've seen or given were in a business context and what was required was absolute professionalism, not an act put on for light entertainment. I needn't have worried though: the book is an essential guide to preparing and giving your presentation, with or without what has now come to be known as The Dreaded PowerPoint. I've been making presentations successfully (but I'll say more about this later) in various professional situations for some forty or more years and I did wonder if the book would be able to teach me anything. It did.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1472938062
|title=Boards That Dare: How to Future-proof Today's Corporate Boards
|author=Marc Stigter and Sir Cary Cooper
|rating=5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=I wasn't optimistic when I started reading ''Boards That Dare''. I feared that I would encounter new ways of minimising tax liabilities, of getting as much as possible out of employees whilst paying them the legal minimum and constant reminders that the ''shareholders'' own the company and of the necessity of maximising their return. In the event, I was only a few pages in before I discovered that I couldn't have been more wrong, that we were looking at ways of future-proofing the company. I began to feel hopeful...
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=Mackay_Trials
|title=Trials and Tribulations of a Travelling Prostitute
|author=Andrew Mackay
|rating=3.5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=Just chance you think that you're picking up a book about what can go wrong in life for an itinerant sex worker I'd better explain exactly what it was that author Andrew Mackay did for thirty-three years. A travelling prostitute is a worker who is employed by one company but his services are sold out to other countries, usually at a substantial profit to the employing company and a lot of inconvenience to the employee. Mackay was an engineer who knew all that there was to be know about turbines and generators, or if he didn't could soon be up to speed to the extent of being able to teach other people. Occasionally his skills were used in the UK, but frequently he was abroad. Just every now and again he would be in those parts of the world which has the rest of us green with envy, but then there were those areas which feature heavily in the news and not in a good way.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=Bell_DIY
|title=The DIY Investor: How to take control of your investments and plan for a financially secure future
|author=Andy Bell
|rating=5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=Investments are confusing. They're also rather frightening unless you have a background in finance: you could invest in equities which seem likely to make your fortune, only to find that you've lost all your money. On the other hand, you could put all your savings into a nice, safe building society or bank account only to find that the interest is so derisory that your capital doesn't actually have the same buying power that it did when you opened the account. You could, of course, spend the money, but what about when you want to buy a house, replace the roof or retire? The roof might be relatively cheap but the other two are going to need a substantial investment pot.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=WilliamsNelson_Time
|title=Time is Money
|author=T K Williams-Nelson
|rating=4
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=Whatever your age it's frustrating to have to work for someone else. If you're under twenty-five there's a strong chance that you'll be under-valued and probably not paid very well. There is though, a certain security in employment, usually because there's a reasonable certainty of income and a possibility of paid holidays: when you're self-employed neither of those are guaranteed. It is, though, a big step to leap into the world of self-employment. ''Time is Money'' is a self-development tool aimed at young people, creatives and people in business.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=Duhigg_Smarter
|title=Smarter Faster Better
|author=Charles Duhigg
|rating=5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=''Smarter Faster Better'' is the ideal book for someone who loves both stories and career-related self-improvement. Readers looking for quick answers, bullet points or sound bites may be disappointed as Duhigg's approach is to focus on case studies, told with the flair of a short story, and then extrapolate from these rather than listing tips and exercises. However, if you have the time and patience to get to the point of each chapter slowly (and surely this is a subject matter worth devoting time to), you will doubtless find that Duhigg is an excellent storyteller and cleverly articulates the key message from each story so that they stick.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=Coles_Brexit
|title=The Great Brexit Swindle: Why the Mega-Rich and Free Market Fanatics Conspired to Force Britain from the European Union
|author=T J Coles
|rating=3.5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=''Have you been mis-sold Brexit by posh men in sharp suits promising you free healthcare? If so, you might be entitled to compensation...''
There wasn't much could make me laugh on the morning after the EU referendum but this spoof advert on Twitter managed it. Only, it seems that it wasn't completely a joke - well apart from the bit about compensation. In ''The Great Brexit Scandal'' T J Coles looks at the substantial core of free marketeers in the Conservative party who were determined to rid the UK of the Brussels red tape which was putting a brake on their activities. You might also know these views as neoliberalism, an ideology which looks to deregulate markets and maximise profits. On the surface that doesn't sound bad, until you realise that the benefit will go to the people who are already in the group which Coles refers to as the mega-rich and the losers will be working people.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=Baldwin_Great
|title=The Great Convergence
|author=Richard Baldwin
|rating=4
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=The globalisation of the world economy is a central factor in life and politics today. 'The Great Convergence' attempts to explain the current driving forces behind the phenomena and the likely consequences. It is well-argued and supported by a wealth of data and research, but it is not one for a general reader. A background in economic principles and an understanding of some key concepts would be a key requisite in getting the most out of this book. Without this background, the reader will be constantly switching from the text and cross-referencing the meaning of some of the vocabulary used. With that note of caution and the required understanding, Richard Baldwin's analysis is compelling.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=Wiles_Thinking
|title=Thinking Allowed
|author=Julian Wiles
|rating=4
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=''Thinking Allowed? Hmm'', I thought, ''what has that got to do with building a thriving optical lens business?'' But within a few pages of starting to read, I was convinced that it was perfect. You see, this isn't a book which you read, rather like a Delia Smith book, to give you a precise recipe for how you must proceed to achieve a perfect result. No two businesses are alike, any more than any two owners are alike and Julian Wiles allows you to approach your business from all angles: there are even ways you can get his personal advice. This is no ordinary 'how-to' book. There are no chapter numbers (you pick from the menu) and it's not even necessary to read the book in any particular order.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=Fraser_Forestry
|title=Forestry Flavours of the Month: The Changing Face of World Forestry
|author=Alastair Fraser
|rating=4.5
|genre=Business and Finance
|summary=Alastair Fraser's experience of forestry spans more than five decades and having the benefit of the long view he's ideally placed to consider the changes which have occurred over the course of his career. He also has the ability, not as common as it ought to be amongst professionals, of being able to look at what he does both from the point of view of the business and the people who work in it and are affected by it. There's a lack of tunnel vision too: he sees what's happening in forestry both in the narrow focus and where it sits globally so far as economics and politics are concerned.
}}
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