Kirjahaku

The Compact Real Estate Appraiser is a thumbnail reference for the real estate researcher, analyst or appraiser. It's a style guide for more consistent report writing; a shortcut to analytical procedures commonly used in real estate valuation; a set of 33 immutable laws; and a roundup of common elements of value, income sources and operating expenses for the most prevalent property types. It also features chapters on etiquette and leadership, eminent domain and percipient witness testimony. It was written for the junior researcher working in a small shop, the analyst pursuing his state license or the mid-career general appraiser looking for guidance and standardization.

The American party platter is on performance enhancers - in some cases literally. The salty snacks, chicken wings, suds and crustaceans have never been more plentiful, but the regulatory state and the forces of globalization have created big distortions and nurtured hidden risks. Globalization's grocery bill is coming due. The table is now set for upheaval.

Hoisting the flag of waste and abuse, the author, a former newspaperman, issues a clarion call. He takes the reader deep inside a tiny Washington, D.C., foundation that has managed to have its copyrighted code of conduct enshrined in federal and state law. All 50 states, even the U.S. territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, now enforce it. The nonprofit has parlayed the arrangement into a lucrative publishing cartel with top officers and favored trustees jet-setting to Europe and Asia. Stateside, the group hosts officials of an obscure federal agency in winter playgrounds like Pasadena, Scottsdale and West Palm Beach. The agency wet-nurses the nonprofit with guaranteed public grants topping $1 million some years. The author interweaves vivid scene-setting and thoughtful analysis with the surprising comments of stone-honest civil servants, double-talking careerists and anonymous fixers deep in the plumbing of state and federal government. On his journey, the author is jolted by an epiphany.

The financial crisis of 2007-2008 was cataclysmic. Its bitter legacy will be felt for decades. The author, a former newspaper editor, walks the reader through the smoldering wreckage of a crisis that took the global financial system to the edge of the abyss. He delivers a well-crafted, concise almanac to the crisis that includes essays, chronologies, roundups and lists. "The Ichthyologist's Guide to the Subprime Meltdown" is no fusty treatise. Like a modern-day Jacques Cousteau, the author, grasping to explain the collectively suicidal behavior leading up to the debacle, turns his gaze upon so-called "biological markets."