Form Your Own Corporation and Launch a Business in Any State

Customer Reviews:

One of the best books on incorporating your business.......2004-03-07

J.W. Dicks is a busisnessman with actual in the field experience and an attorney with the legal background.

While there are many books on how to incorporate, this one is written by a man who has/is in business, thinks like a businessman but also understands and knows the legal jargon.

I highly recommend this book along with the Small Business Legal Kit also by J.W. Dicks and Inc. Yourself by Judith H. McQuown.

Must reading for anyone in business.......2003-11-10

Whether you are contmplating starting your own business or are already in one and need good, accurate information on how to incorporate, this book is a must read for. You will find all of the information you need and the necessary forms. Also recommend The Small Business Legal Kit by J.W.Dicks which is 450 pages of with a disk and easy to fill in the blanks forms. You can become your own lawyer.

Form a business or corporation in any state........2003-09-27

This an excellent book written by an attorney and business person. I have purchased other books on corporations but was vastly dissappointed. This one is excellent.

Highly recommended!

Book Description

During the American Civil War, popular prints were frequently used to depict, define, and celebrate both the Union and Confederate causes. The Union Image explores the graphic arts that portrayed the Northern side—both in patriotic pictures and newsworthy illustrations published while the war raged and in retrospective images issued years later as major weapons in the postwar battle to shape the national memory.

Book Description

The first major modern edition of the wartime correspondence of General William T. Sherman, this volume features more than 400 letters written between the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and the day Sherman bade farewell to his troops in 1865. Together, they trace Sherman's rise from obscurity to become one of the Union's most famous and effective warriors.

Arranged chronologically and grouped into chapters that correspond to significant phases in Sherman's life, the letters—many of which have never before been published—reveal Sherman's thoughts on politics, military operations, slavery and emancipation, the South, and daily life in the Union army, as well as his reactions to such important figures as General Ulysses S. Grant and President Lincoln.

Lively, frank, opinionated, discerning, and occasionally extremely wrong-headed, these letters mirror the colorful personality and complex mentality of the man who wrote them. They offer the reader an invaluable glimpse of the Civil War as Sherman saw it.

Customer Reviews:

A man of war, a man of letters...a magnificent collection of Uncle Billy's writings!!.......2007-07-19

William Tecumseh Sherman was a brilliant military genius and a true eccentric.
A fascinating and complex man, who found his destiny in war. Sherman revelled in war and owed much to it: he began it as an former officer of modest means and ended it hailed as the Union greatest general next to Grant. At the same time he loathed and despised war and was horrified by it. He was shocked by what the war did to his country, his people, his soldiers and to himself. At times he was appalled by his duties as an officer, but he was always highly resolved to perform these duties.

Everybody who has ever read his memoirs knows that Sherman was not only a great general but also a very talented writer. His memoirs are not a dry succession of events and his part in it, but they convey how he lived through the war and how and why he did what he did in it.
Now professor Brooks D. Simpson has edited a big volume of his Sherman's correspondence from the Civil War years. Again it is the quality of the Sherman's writing which catches the eye and pleases the mind. His letters, as are his memoirs, are a joy to read. This book offers an interesting perspective on Sherman and his part in the war. Reading the memoirs is like having Sherman telling his war experiences to you, long after the facts. This is interesting enough but reading his letters is even more so. It feels like being there with him in his tent, in some Union camp during the war, looking over his shoulder while events are shaping. A truly fascinating experience.
He pours his heart out to his brother John, to his wife Ellen, to his friend Grant and to many others.
So many aspects of his personality appear: his quicksilver intelligence, his warmth and humanity, his wicked and dry sense of humour, his fundamental decency and his military capability.
Read this book and look intro Sherman's mind: it is an interesting place.

The book itself is a big b*gger, but once you've started, you'll be grateful that is is so big: you'll hate to finish it. It looks great, which I like in books and it's very nicely turned out, with good quality binding , high grade paper, a pretty typesetting and a nice dust jacket design. Listings and indexes are clear and elaborate, which is useful in a book like this. So here's a big thumbs up to the publisher's (Chapel Hill North Carolina State University Press): very well done, a fine piece of work!!!

I can't recommend this too highly. A must for all those who are interested in history, in the American Civil War and/or in Sherman. Read and enjoy the letters uncle Billy wrote in those four years of war and enjoy the sight and the feel of this beautifully made book.

A great collection of primary documents.......2006-05-16

It's difficult to rate a collection of primary documents such as this one for several reasons. The quality of the documents themselves might be very good but the arrangement or editing of them might be very poor, in which case it becomes a question of whether you should rate the volume well for the documents themselves or poorly for the editing job. Fortunately this collection does not have that issue, as both the primary documents themselves and the editing of them are excellent.

This massive volume contains much of Sherman's correspondence during the war. Surprisingly, these letters are enjoyable to read, and the editors have done a great job of compiling and editing them. Reading these letters, orders, etc of General Sherman can give someone a very unique perspective of the Civil War as Sherman himself saw it, without the bias of authors who have written about it since and without the inevitable coloring of events that happens later when war heroes write about their experiences (and which certainly affected his memoirs, though I do believe they were very honest and straightforward). General Sherman is one of my heroes from the Civil War, and this collection of glimpses into his brilliant mind certainly fed my understanding and fascination of the man.

Wonderful glimpse into the mind of Sherman.......2000-12-31

William T. Sherman was an irascible, unpredictably brilliant man and his letters bring out these myriad traits. He was a fascinating man and his own words illuminate his fiery personality. Sherman's own 1875 memoirs are a mixed bag, marred by an over-abundance of wartime correspondence and ancillary material. This collection of his letters actually makes for more engrossing, instructive reading. We hear his opinions on the major players of the Civil War: Grant, Halleck and Lincoln. We gain an understanding of his tortured relationship with his wife, Ellen, to whom many of the letters are addressed. His visceral hatred of the press and reporters is well represented.

Average customer rating:
Dictionary of American Biography (Comprehensive Index: Complete Through Supplement Ten)
American Council of Learned Societies
Manufacturer: Scribners
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NCXU9S

Book Description

Although in the UK and other industrial countries, wealth and affluence are widely perceived to be growing, this is not the same as genuine human development. "Poverty in Plenty" draws on the work of leading research institutes and campaigning groups, to assess the real state of society and of human development in the UK. The results it presents are far from reassuring, in absolute terms and for the trends revealed. The contributions show how widespread poverty is in many of things that make life worthwhile: education, diet, health, mobility, participation, consumption.
The results will be startling and of vital importance to all those working on social issues in the public and voluntary sectors, as well as many students and general readers wanting the truth behind the public statistics.

Amazon.com

During Orson Welles' tumultuous honeymoon in Hollywood 1939-1942, Thomson writes, he achieved "glory, but ruined himself; the one was not possible without the other." In this sweeping tribute to the man said to have "more genius than talent," Thomson chronicles the events that transformed Welles from Hollywood's bad boy into one of the most influential and enduring filmmakers. The accounts of Welles' intellect only serve to contrast with the self-destructiveness of his post-Kane years, and Thomson's analysis shows that Citizen Kane loomed over the actor-film maker, not just as an achievement he could never equal, "but as an underground presaging of his own destiny."

Book Description

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

"Easily the best book on Orson Welles."  --The New Yorker

Orson Welles arrived in Hollywood as a boy genius, became a legend with a single perfect film, and then spent the next forty years floundering. But Welles floundered so variously, ingeniously, and extravagantly that he turned failure into "a sustaining tragedy"--his thing, his song.  Now the prodigal genius of the American cinema finally has the biographer he deserves. For, as anyone who has read his novels and criticism knows, David Thomson is one of our most perceptive and splendidly opinionated writers on film.

In Rosebud, Thomson follows the wild arc of Welles's career, from The War of the Worlds broadcast to the triumph of Citizen Kane, the mixed triumph of The Magnificent Ambersons, and the strange and troubling movies that followed. Here, too, is the unfolding of the Welles persona--the grand gestures, the womanizing, the high living, the betrayals. Thomson captures it all with a critical acumen and stylistic dash that make this book not so much a study of Welles's life and work as a glorious companion piece to them.

"Insightful, controversial, and highly readable--Rosebud is biography at its best."  --Cleveland Plain Dealer

Customer Reviews:

Drivel.......2007-07-29

I have read many books on Welles and this one is absolute garbage. I wasted no time removing this book from my home within minutes of finishing it. Avoid at all costs. It is worthless, from cover to cover. Read Frank Brady's "Citizen Welles" instead.

Citizen Welles: The Rise and Fall of a Hollywood Behemoth.......2006-05-24

George Orson Welles (1915-1985) will live forever as the director of arguably the greatest Hollywood Film: Citizen Kane.
Welles directed such classics as "The Magnificent Ambersons";
"The Lady from Shangai"; "Touch of Evil" and "Macbeth.
Welles was known as a boy genius rocketing to fame as the
WPA theatre whiz who directed several New York plays in Harlem
along with his collaborater John Houseman (they later quarreled
and no longer worked together).
Welles became known to all of America with his powerful voice being heard on countless radio prgrams notably "The Green Hornet.
His notoriety was achieved with the 1938 broadcast of "The
War of the Worlds" by H.G. Welles which scared thousands of listeners to believe that Martians had really landed in New
Jersey!
Thomas is a perceptive, entertaining, acerbic and wise scholar of cinema. His look at the life of Welles is insightful.
The Welles who emerges from these pages was multi-faceted, complex and egotistical. Welles drank and ate to much; had too
many affairs, three wives and said a long goodbye after Hollywood shut its doors to this iconoclastic and brilliant man.
If you want a detailed chronological account of Welles life
turn to Frank Brady or Simon Callow's biographies. If you want
a writer who shares his personal reactions to Welles then this
is the book for you.
I thoroughly enjoyed this excellent work. It has helped me
understand the garantuan talent of the late great Orson!
Well done and recommended by this reviewer!

A very creepy book.......2005-07-25

I have been doing a lot of reading on Welles for a research project and while it is clear that Welles was no angel, this book seems to go out of its way to put Welles in the worst possible light. There are too many flights of fancy and liberties taken. For example, based on no evidence Thomson suggests that not only did Welles have sexual relations with Dorothy Commingore but that he practically raped her. Perhaps the book reveals more about the author than it does about its subject.

There are some useful takes on lesser known figures like John Toland but on the whole it is a book to take with several grains of salt.

Judgement day for Orson Welles.......2005-01-29

David Thomson thinks he's some kind of superior being and criticizes in a pompous and condescendent manner everything Welles ever did. He's one of those people who think that Welles never achieved anything after Kane. He wonders if he was even really responsible for Kane? He states that Welles did not write any of the script (false), that Greg Toland was director of photography while Robert Wise was responsible for the editing. SO what did Welles do? He directed! Apparently, that's not enough to make Kane his movie, his masterpiece, among others. Well if movies were only based on photography, scripting and editing, then why would directors be needed?

Thomson insults Welles in every paragraph; he hammers him over and over, relentlessly. He focuses on the less successful aspects of his life and exaggerates them. He ridicules him, makes fun of his weight, says he's egotistical, a liar, a misogynist, an unfaithful friend, a machiavellic mischievous man who uses people, cheats on his wives, dates married women, eats like a pig and stuffs his face with anything he could find (he talks a lot about that), a pretend genius or would be genius who thinks he's the victim of evil Hollywood moguls. What other bad things could be said about Welles? Basically, any insult or evil thought you would ever have towards your worse enemy would not match up to the way Thomson writes about Welles.

Welles is not the only target of the author's wrath towards famous people. Any dead actor that was a friend or acquaintance of welles is also treated unkindly, as for the ones who are still alive, Thomson refrains himself from making a judgement. What a coward! Dead celebrities are such easy targets to criticism aren't they?

When Thompson runs out of evil things to say, he talks about his childhood and when he went to see The Third Man with his grand mother who for some reason has a claw instead of a hand. Oh poor little David, he could not hold his grandma's hand, only a claw! Tear. Who cares! Also, he has the annoying habit of interrupting every other chapter with imaginary conversations between the writer (?) and the publisher (?). It's never quite clear and really pointless. It's a way for him to put himself in value and shows how he can also criticize his own work. What a decent man!...

I was not expecting a hagiography, I know Welles was not godlike. Thomson explains at the end of the book that he does not mean to put Welles down, but only attempts to humanize him. Well there's a difference between humanizing someone and destroying the truth. Also, a biography should include anecdotes, facts, it should be detailed and accurate. Thompson writes some kind of very superficial, selective, inaccurate story, with imaginary dialogues about what people could have said to welles or thought of him. You can't assume things in a biography.

The author is too involved with his own thoughts instead of sticking to the facts in an objective manner. If you want to learn about Welles, read "Road to Xanadu' by Simon Callow, which focuses on Welles life up to Kane. Or "This is Orson Welles" which is a series of Welles interviews conducted by Peter Bogdanovich in which Welles tells the story of his life. Sure he had a tendency of lying about his past, but only because he was a story teller. Story Tellers always add a little to the truth. Thomson has no such skill.

Unfortunately I can't give 0 star to this book, or I would. It's really just food for the shredder.

Lack of facts make for a better bio!.......2004-02-22

David Thomson's , though undeniably detailed and well researched, was also lacking in many respects. This was a good thing.

Several years back, upon my brother's behest, I picked up a book entitled by Simon Callow. Callow's book was intensively researched, shattering the godlike Wellesian visage that existed within my mind due to Welles' own self promoting exaggerations. The imposingly thick tome only covers the first 26 years of Welles' life, and though entertaining, I found Callow to be highly skeptical , a bit removed from his subject and utterly exhausting.

Thomson's work, in comparison to Callow's, may seem rushed and under researched, but that is only part of its charm. Thomson has no ill intentions of passing himself off as someone who has done vast amounts of research, but merely as a great admirer of Welles willing to ask questions and make bold observations. Not blinded by hero worship, Thomson is ready and able to criticize Welles for what he sees as a genius' failures or shortcomings, and I believe he is able to do so in a way that does not lend itself to Callow's skepticism. If I wanted to read a straightforward text on the life of Welles, I could easily do some research and find books like Frank Brady's biography, but Thomson's is anything but conventional, inviting the reader to partake in some musings and discussions on an enigmatic character with the stylistic flourish of the most engaging novelist.

Thomson is able to expand upon the aspects of Welles' life that he finds most fascinating or noteworthy, leaving me to feel as though Welles' earlier radio and theatre work, which Callow goes into extensively, were not of great interest to Thomson. It is upon Welles' entry into film that really picks up, and though Thomson reveals a frustratingly sad side of Welles, it is not altogether cynical and abrasive. Thomson is uninterested in simply providing an unbiased view of Welles, for which I applaud him, as offers up very personal opinions that may or may not be wholly justified, but they all encouraged me to second guess myself, second guess Welles and see things from another perspective.

is no "Idiot's Guide To" anything, and for that I was grateful. Another rehashing of the same tired "...and then this happened, and this is what Welles said about it..." is precisely what Thomson avoided.

Thomson provides an examination of Orson Welles in a light I had previously not seen, basking the legend in an unappealing, and all-too-human glow that lovingly gives fault to fantasy, adding a character and life that could easily be overlooked by "sticking to the facts" as it were.

David Thomson is simply not the man to be writing a straightforward biography. He lovingly embraces his subject, attempting to recreate a destroyed man by examining his cinematic triumphs, his humanistic failures and, yes, even his quirky physical traits. For this unique view, is a more valuable text to me than a thousand exhausting Callows.

Average customer rating:
Rosebud, The Story Of Orson Welles
David THOMSON
Manufacturer: Little Brown
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OUDC38

Book Description

The daughter of medical missionaries, Elaine Neil Orr was born in Nigeria in 1954, in the midst of the national movement that would lead to independence from Great Britain. But as she tells it in her captivating new memoir, Orr did not grow up as a stranger abroad; she was a girl at home--only half American, the other half Nigerian. When she was sent alone to the United States for high school, she didn't realize how much leaving Africa would cost her.

It was only in her forties, in the crisis of kidney failure, that she began to recover her African life. In writing Gods of Noonday she came to understand her double-rootedness: in the Christian church and the Yoruba shrine, the piano and the talking drum. Memory took her back from Duke Medical Center in North Carolina to the shores of West Africa and her hometown of Ogbomosho in the land of the Yoruba people. Hers was not the dysfunctional American family whose tensions are brought into high relief by the equatorial sun, but a mission girlhood is haunted nonetheless--by spiritual atmospheres and the limits of good intentions.

Orr's father, Lloyd Neil, formerly a high school athlete and World War II pilot, and her mother, Anne, found in Nigeria the adventure that would have escaped them in 1950s America. Elaine identified with her strong, fun-loving father more than her reserved mother, but she herself was as introspective and solitary as her sister Becky was pretty and social. Lloyd acquired a Chevrolet station wagon which carried Elaine and her friends to the Ethiope River, where they swam much as they might have in the United States. But at night the roads were becoming dangerous, and soon the days were clouded by smoke from the coming Biafran War.

Interweaving the lush mission compounds with Nigerian culture, furloughs in the American South with boarding school in Nigeria, and eventually Orr's failing health, the narrative builds in intensity as she recognizes that only through recovering her homeland can she find the strength to survive. Taking its place with classics such as Out of Africa and more recent works like The Poisonwood Bible and Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Gods of Noonday is a deeply felt, courageous portrait of a woman's life.

Customer Reviews:

A whiny and self-absorbed memoir.......2006-08-06

It may have been therapeutic for the author to revisit the emotional insecurites of her childhood, but it's no fun for the reader. I read this book to learn about her experiences as a white girl growing up in Africa, but this is not a book about Africa. It is a book about a whiny and self-absorbed person who is STILL agonizing over not being elected the princess of the Valentine's Dance in middle school. The person I feel sorriest for is her mother, who comes in for criticism for her emotional distance, when all the evidence offered by the author suggests that her mother was a loving and caring parent, albeit with a career of her own.

The same week I read this I also read Zenzele. Read that one and give this a miss.

Plenty at Stake in "Gods of Noonday".......2004-01-25

Elaine Neil Orr's memoir, Gods of Noonday: A White Girl's African Life, is an essential book in an era of global expansion. Orr's courage to claim as home Nigeria, the land of her birth and childhood, despite her expatriate status, should encourage expatriate children everywhere to claim their various nations, whether they integrated to host cultures or not. It should encourage them to do the archeology, as Orr does, uncovering the archetypes of their host cultures, whether they were conscious of them at the time or not. And it should encourage families raising children overseas to give them a fuller immersion, permit them host country playmates, and encourage local education and language study. Parents employed outside their borders must recognize that their childhood homes are not their children's childhood homes.
Orr's most symbolic immersion was swimming in the cool clear Ethiope, and she claims the river as her sacred ground. "Nothing you could tell me about Jehovah was equal to the proof of divinity provided by the mere existence of so lovely a river. And so I worshipped it."
The river represents the cultural immersion Orr longs for, after the fact. Her life in Nigeria seems decorous and material as she recalls American girl toys she got for Christmas in an American decorated house, later wishing it had been African art. Orr contrasts herself to "real missionaries" who spoke native languages, lived among Nigerians and regarded her, a white child, as no "more special than they (Nigerian children) were."
Honesty glimmers through that exceeds "Out of Africa" and "The Poisonwood Bible," however much those books claim to be "of the land." For instance, Orr sees the anger of Nigerians directed at American missionaries during the U.S. Civil Rights Movement when bulletin boards were defaced in the hospital where her father was administrator and her mother a nurse.
It seems that Orr mourns a land she lived on, often secluded from, rather than in and among. And yet she dares to claim more, and that claim of being Nigerian is like catharsis in her illness, which is, perhaps, her most poignant claim. She suffers a disease, diabetes, common to African Americans in the U.S., many of whom, she realizes, may not have received the care she did as she faces end stage renal disease.
Dr. Orr's writing recalls Isaak Denisen's, in that there is longing on every page. But it also recognizes the fallacy of claiming too much, knowing (as Ngugi wa Thiong'o did in "Weep Not Child," his lament in response to "Out of Africa"), that the land taken by colonists was not theirs to mourn. Even when her mother attempts to involve the teenage Elaine in Sunday evening meetings, she realizes, "I had become too Americanized to feel comfortable trying to pass as a Urhobo girl...."
Her voice and project gain strength as she interweaves her adult experience of declining health and relationships, finding that she has resisted intimate friendships, whether because she moved so often, or because she is seeking to "rekindle a greater loss." The reader may wish to know more about how her marriage was resolved, but that may be another volume.
Grippingly Orr writes about the Biafran war (1967-70), the suffering all around and the shields thrown up for the children even after the loss of a mission surgeon. "You really should not try to raise children in the midst of a war and pretend it isn't there," she writes in one of many direct addresses to her readers. We are drawn in.
Orr is also eloquent about the estrangement experienced on returning to the land that was supposed to be her home. She refutes the misconception that the trauma of MK life is about landing in Africa without prior knowledge of the culture. "West Africa will take you in." Rather the trauma is in moving back to America and trying to pass as an insider. "It's hard to hold up under that kind of pressure and remember who you are."
She finished high school in the U.S. where she "I often attempted greatness, but it was very hard without a village behind me." Her unique observation echoes a weighty theme among global nomads (see "Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing Up Global"). Orr recognizes that, despite being enriched by Nigeria, she was impoverished of community at "home." The America her parents were rescuing her for was already lost to her, and her boarding school compound was seperated from African village life.
Also essential at a time when missionary kids are confronting their missions (see: mksafetynet.com) and demanding trained dorm parents and child advocates, is Orr's recognition of sexual hazing and ritualized beatings in the boys' dorm. The rules of decent behavior frayed, so that "I left like the foreigner I was. I left the way I always left: without a tear." Her connectedness to any place was unavailable to her. Her wrenching refrain is, "For all I loved there, it was not mine to hold."
Even those who've lived all their lives as rooted as trees should read this book for Orr's masterful style; her resonant similes, "My youth was slipping away like badly spent money"; her metaphorical verbs, "the joy that petaled my youth"; her strong declaratives, "I was a Nigerian spirit born to an American mother: a crossed star, a mixed message, a long hunger."
There is plenty at stake in this book, as Orr faces death or rebirth from her illness. The tension builds and the ending is exquisite.

A Kindred Spirit.......2004-01-23

Although never a missionary kid, Orr's memories of growing up during the 60s and early 70s struck a resonant chord and I felt as if I knew her - or perhaps WAS her. We were born in the same year, and like Orr I was raised in the Southern Baptist Church. I was a "GA" like she was and learned early my "place" in the dynamics of a church congregation. So many of the conflicting emotions Orr felt as a girl who wasn't sure where she belonged, as well as her ambivalent feelings about her family led to an insightful prose that accurately describes my own emotions during that time in my life - although we were an ocean apart. With clear, concise writing that often turned poetic, this book was an enjoyable read from start to finish, and I'm sure to re-visit it time and again.

A Memior Which Speaks to Parents.......2003-12-01

While the descriptions of the land and the people of Nigeria are powerful and beautiful, the relationship of the children and the author in particular, to the adults and to their parents really spoke to me. Do we pay attention to our children? Are we there when they need us? What happens when we are so distracted by our work and our passion that the child's voice goes unheard?

Ms. Orr's book also portrays the universal struggles of young women, teenagers in particular, as they grow up amidst difficult and demanding societal pressures. Ms. Orr may have felt attached to Africa but America had a hold on her as a young woman. This book offers a rich experience for mothers and daughters to read "Gods of Noonday" together and to explore their own unique relationships.

It is also a story of great survival and determination as Ms. Orr faced the very real possibility of losing her battle against Diabetes and kidney failure. "Gods of Noonday" is a treasure.

I LOVED THIS BOOK.......2003-11-26

Elaine Neil Orr writes with such poetic beauty and detail that it makes you feel as though you have stepped into the scene. She has such an interesting story to tell of growing up in Nigeria, struggling to blend in with American society and battling a serious disease in her adult years. Once I picked up the book, I could hardly put it down. Orr has an exceptional gift for making words come to life. I highly recommend this book!

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