The Initial Public Offering: A Guidebook for Executives and Boards of Directors (2nd Edition).

The Initial Public Offering: A Guidebook for Executives and Boards of Directors (2nd Edition). By Patrick H. Schultheis, Christian E. Montegut, Robert G. O'Connor, Shawn J. Lindquist and J. Randall Lewis. Bowne Financial Print, 223 pages. Free.

Any book written by committee sounds like it might be coming from a team of lawyers--and that's incontrovertibly the case here. The attorneys are with the Palo Alto, Calif.-based firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, which is a font of wisdom about IPOs, having been involved with more--239--in the period of 1998-2003 than any other law firm.

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There's nothing terribly fancy here--no tables or slick diagrams--but a thorough and scrupulously detailed accounting of the various steps, guidelines and procedures to implement when doing an IPO, plus tips on what to avoid. There's an extensive set of appendices as well, covering areas like listing requirements, due diligence, timelines and Securities and Exchange Commission rules adopted following passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

Some sections have literally pages on pages of bulleted items. That's not literature, but it's good information, well-summarized. If you haven't done an IPO and are casting around for guidance, this book would be an excellent place to start. It can obtained directly from Bowne offices or downloaded from the Web at www.bowne.com.