Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

A novel about freaks, geeks, crushes, and friends--and how sometimes you can be all of them at once.

Charlie is the freak. Gloria is the freak magnet. They're pretty much destined to meet. And when they do, sparks fly . . . for Charlie. Gloria, well, she just thinks he's like every other freak who feels compelled to talk to her, although a little better-looking than most.

While Charlie has his head in the clouds, Gloria's got hers in a book: her Freak Folio--a record of every weirdo who's talked to her in the last year (it's a big book). But never before has she felt the pull to get to know one of them better. Until now.

In this he-said-she-said tale of love, loss, and lucky signs from the author of the ac-claimed Funny Little Monkey, two young strangers at a crossroads in their lives become friends by happy accident (okay, maybe some harmless stalking is involved--and not by the person you'd think!) and forever change each other.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• 1 Management Accounting: Information that Creates Value
• Be Data Literate-Know What to Know
• Cost/Management Accounting: The 21st Century Paradigm
• Management Accounting in the Era of Electronic Commerce
• 2 A Framework for Management Accounting and Control Systems
• Strategic Cost Management and the Value Chain
• ABC and High Technology: A Story with a Moral
• ABC and Life-Cycle Costing for Environmental Expenditures
• 3 Traditional Cost Management Systems
• How Cost Accounting Distorts Product Costs
• What Are the Costs of Variability?
• The Outsourcing Decision
• Does Your Company Need a New Cost System?
• How Much Does that Product Really Cost?
• The Rise and Fall of Time-Based Manufacturing
• Distinguishing Between Direct and Indirect Costs Is Crucial for Internet Companies
• 4 Activity Based Cost Management Systems
• Is ABC Suitable for Your Company?
• Customer Profitability Analysis: Challenges and New Directions
• Measuring and Managing Customer Profitability
• ABM Lifts Bank's Bottom Line
• Unbundling the Cost of Hospitalization
• 5 Management Accounting Information for Activity and Process Decisions
• Accounting for Time: Reengineering Business Processes to Improve Responsiveness
• Designing an Information System Using Activity-Based Costing and the Theory of Constraints
• Effective Long-Term Cost Reduction: A Strategic Perspective
• GE Takes Six Sigma Beyond the Bottom Line
• 6 Cost Information for Pricing and Product Planning
• How Manufacturers Price Products
• Activity-Based Costing for Marketing
• Distribution Channel Profitability
• Formula for Success: Target Costing for Cost-Plus Pricing Companies
• 7 Management Accounting and Control Systems: Assessing Performance Over the Entire Value Chain
• Control Tomorrow's Costs Through Today's Designs
• The Use of Target Costing in Developing the Mercedes Benz M-Class
• The Elements of Supply Chain Management
• Managerial Accounting and Environmental Compliance Costs
• Implementing Management Innovations Successfully: Principles for Lasting Change
• 8 Motivating Behavior in Management Accounting and Control Systems
• The Control Function of Managemen

Author notes provided by Syndetics

S. Mark Young holds the KPMG Professor of Accounting and is also Professor of Management and Organization at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. Previously, Dr. Young served as the Associate Dean for Academic Planning and Associate Dean and Academic Director of the Marshall MBA (Full-Time MBA) Program. Professor Young received an A.B. from Oberlin College (Economics), an M. Acc. from the Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.

Professor Young has published research in a variety of journals including The Accounting Review, Accounting, Organizations and Society, and the Journal of Accounting Research. Currently, he is on the editorial board of four major journals and was past Associate Editor for The Accounting Review. Much of his research has been sponsored by major research grants from the National Science Foundation, the Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing International, and The Institute of Management Accountants. In 1994, Young and coauthor Professor Frank Selto won the Notable Contributions to the Management Accounting Literature Award. His most recent book is Implementing Management Innovations: Lessons Learned from Activity-Based Manufacturing in the US. Automobile Industry (coauthored with Shannon Anderson, Kluwer Academic Press, 2001). This book won the Notable Contributions to the Management Accounting Literature Award for 2003.

Dr. Young has extensive executive teaching and consulting experience having taught in executive programs for DaimlerChrysler, Texas Instruments, Shell Oil, AMGEN and British Airways. Most recently, Dr. Young has had consulting or research relationships with the First Data Corporation, the Chrysler Corporation, Texas Instruments, and Southwest Airlines. He has won four outstanding teaching awards at the undergraduate and graduate levels, including the Golden Apple Teaching Award at USC. In 2003, Professor Young was named a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Excellence in Teaching at USC. Only five faculty members across all academic departments at USC received this award.

Professor Young also maintains an interest in popular culture particularly in the areas of science fiction and vintage space toys. He has written articles for Filmfax Magazine The Magazine of Unusual Film and Television, The Old Toy Soldier, and The Scoop (an online magazine devoted to popular culture). Recently, he and coauthors Mike Richardson and Steve Duin published, Blast Off! Rockets, Robots, Ray Guns, and Rarities from the Golden Age of Space Toys (Dark Horse Books, 2001) a volume on the social history of vintage space toys. This book served as the museum show catalog for Blast Off! Space Toys and the American Imagination at The California Center for the Arts in Escondido, California in 2001 and accompanied another major show at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago in 2002.