Customer Reviews

Personnel Law (4th Edition)

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I have to use this book as the text for a class I teach in Employment Law (i.e., non-collective-bargaining law) to students matriculating to a Master of Science Degree in Human Resources. The text adequately surveys the law, but suffers from terrible proofing and editing; it also needs an update, because the 1994 edition obviously was not written any later than early 1993, based on the omission of certain important U.S. Supreme Court cases from 1994 and since. The book also suffers from an extremely strong pro-management tone; a more balanced approach would serve the untutored reader better. There are better books, such as the ABA Guide, which I commend to potential readers of this book.

The very first sentence of the Prologue of this book contains a grammatical error (it should be "principles," not "principals") and I am sorry to say that things don't get much better. I purchased this book as a text for an Employment Law class and it was terrible; I quit using it halfway through the course and recommended the instructor find another text. The author seems to think he's the most credible person in the world but, as someone who is also a human resources practitioner, I can assert from experience that many of his opinions (several of which are presented as "facts") are wrong. He clearly doesn't even understand what the field of human resources IS, and in many cases I found his tone very offensive.

In addition to using more current information, Sovereign would be well-advised to better consider his audience and to research the field of human resources in general. I would suggest he start with professional organizations such as SHRM or ASTD; the advice and information on their web sites is far superior to anything in this text.

This book by Kenneth Sovereign is a very readable book on personnel or Human Resource Management law.
The Human Resource Manager, manager, supervisor or others conderned with managing and supervising people should have a book such as this at their fingertips. It is a necessary part of being a real manager or supervisor.

A good read for those in business.

J. Robert Ewbank author "John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'"

Sovereign seems to skip around often in a half-hearted effort at being comprehensive. The cases are not very recent, despite the publication date, and the book has a definite lack of flow. It is almost as if the author threw together several mismatched segments and forgot to edit it for comprehension and cohesiveness.