Princeton Review: Word Smart for Business: Cultivating a Six-Figure Vocabulary

Want to know what currency they use in Egypt? You won't find the Pound in the list of currencies. Want to know what the Coase Theorem is about? There is no excuse for omitting Coase and 4 others arbitrarily from the list of Nobel laureates, as Ronald Coase got his award in 1991. James Tobin was included, but there is no mention of the Tobin Tax, as the concept gained prominence a few years AFTER this book was published in 1999. As a reference work, this book fails miserably. As a literary work, the definitions are inelegant and clumsy. It is categorically not a dictionary. It is nerd-speak at its best. It needs someone with the skill of Samuel Johnson to refine and polish up the English. But WYSIWYG: what you see is what you get. The stated aim on the cover is "CULTIVATING" a vocabulary for business. It is wildly successful in this respect. It exposes the reader to new words and alternative definitions of ordinary words, like "bus" being a computer pathway between devices. If your object is to learn something, this work has little overlap with other compendiums of words. It is rare and unusual. Five stars for words like "Journeyman" which I thought was related to the musical wanderings of Eric Clapton's best selling album. "Estoppel" was defined as "a restraint..." and in decades of using my favourite legal defence, I have not seen "estoppel" defined in this refreshing way. "Freddie Mac" and "Fannie Mae" (Federal National Morgage Association) were useful inclusions. The definition of "transfer tax" was spot on, and I have yet to find such a concise and accurate definition in any book on taxation. "Laffer Curve", "ampersand", "Ponzi Scheme", are good refreshers of things you already know. Terms like "r correlation co-efficient" and "401(k)" are good memory joggers: there is a load of stuff which makes you go "yeah, I used to know that well - now let me check if my memory is still good". My favourite definition was the lovely one for "reality check": a prompt return to realistic expectations after a period of fanciful thinking. "Analysis paralysis" is also a good one. I fail to see the relevance of the inclusion of ORDINARY words in the absence of a business context, like "cul-de-sac". More patronising is the inclusion of 2 diagrams to illustrate "right angle" which I think is 4th grade mathematics. An illustration of the Dvorak keyboard, on the other hand, would be interesting. In the place of words which can be found in any other vocabulary compendium, I would have liked to see the expansion of terms commonly seen in business, like the German gmbh and AG companies, the European Spa, or the French SA (Societe Anonyme). "Withholding" present, "withholding tax" absent, the latter more useful in international business. "Lis pendens" should add what this does to your credit rating. There are too many legal definitions from Criminal Law, compared to sparse representation from Business Law. White collar crim