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CONTRACT DRAFTING AND NEGOTIATION FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND BUSINESS PROFESSIONALS

Contains minor flaws but provides indispensable insight into contract writing and negotiation.

Awards & Accolades

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From an experienced transactional attorney, a handbook on business contracts and negotiations. 

A former Securities and Exchange Commission and in-house attorney, debut author Swegle provides a clear methodology to understand and analyze business contracts in this exceptionally useful book. First, he examines in detail the language in each section of the typical contract. He next discusses problems that may not appear obvious to the novice contract reader, like how to respond with effective revisions and when to push for new language (revisions are discussed from the viewpoints of both the seller and the buyer). Even an “errant comma” indicating whether a clause is restrictive or nonrestrictive can lead to litigation. “Unfortunately,” the author warns, “Many contract drafting traps are invisible to non-lawyers.” Written in a clear, straightforward style, this book packs in a great deal of detail in a very small space. Other competitors in the business law field may try to engage the reader through authorial hand-holding; Swegle doesn’t. His plainspoken, direct approach places the emphasis where it belongs—writing contracts that protect the interests of both seller and buyer. Swegle also advises on issues that are clarified in one contract section but lurk hidden in another: “The interplay among performance obligations, representations and warranties, disclaimers, limitations, and indemnification is like a complex game of whack-a-mole.” This guide, unlike others in the field, has no sample contract to serve as a demonstration of the author’s understandings and applications. Rather, the author’s decision to discuss step by step each contract section, analyzing as he goes, proves effective in showing how to negotiate key contractual issues through examining and responding to specific language. There is also no conclusion that might either help a reader reflect on what has gone before or provoke further thought; after discussing Declaratory Judgments, the discussion simply stops.

Contains minor flaws but provides indispensable insight into contract writing and negotiation.

Pub Date: June 8, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-692-13830-4

Page Count: 148

Publisher: Business Law Seminar Group, LLC

Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2018

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I AM OZZY

An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.

The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.

Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.

An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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