Michael D. Jenkins

Michael D. Jenkins, author of the "Starting and Operating a Business in (state)" Kindle e-book series for each of 33 states and D.C., has a widely varied business and legal background, which made him an obvious choice to author this kind of book series. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he grew up on a rice farm in the Cajun country of southwest Louisiana. Like his father and all 5 of his siblings, he is a graduate of Louisiana State University, where he received a B.A. in Government and accumulated numerous academic honors. He then earned his J.D. (law) degree from Harvard Law School in 1969.

NOTE: All of the 51 print editions of this series have long been out of print, since 1996 or 1997. However, current (updated) editions for 33 of the states and D.C. are available on Amazon as Kindle e-books.

Being far more interested in business and finance than law, and having spent much of his time at Harvard across the Charles River at the Business School, he turned down lucrative law firm offers after law school and initially went to work as an economics and management consultant with a leading national consulting firm, Economics Research Associates, in Los Angeles and later in their Washington, D.C. area office.

There he did all types of economic feasibility studies for clients that ranged from a multi-year diversification strategy for Conoco, hotel feasibility studies in downtown Philadelphia, and a long-range downtown development study in Houston, to performing the site selection study for the Nixon Presidential Library in Orange County, California (working with several members of Nixon's inner circle who later became involved in Watergate and, thereafter, making license plates).

He later became a CPA and Tax Supervisor with Peat, Marwick & Mitchell in Los Angeles, the world's largest CPA firm at the time, and finally returned to the law as a tax attorney with the large San Francisco and Silicon Valley law firm of Cooley, Godward, et al, where he practiced tax, labor, and pension law for several years. There he handled matters such as billion-dollar mergers and large, complex corporate pension and labor issues, but also became the law firm's small business and start-ups specialist.

After several years of law practice, he got an offer he could not refuse, and returned to CPA practice, quickly becoming a tax partner in a large regional (Bay Area) CPA firm, where he headed the firm's in-house tax training, as well as becoming the featured speaker on taxes at large seminars for lawyers and business people in the area, sponsored by his firm. By 1986, he had taught himself computer programming and published his first software program, which he has continued to develop for the last 40 years, and in that same year retired from law and CPA practice to devote all of his time to updating and promoting the book series and software development.

His first book in the series, "Starting and Operating a Business in California" almost immediately became a hit, after he appeared on several major San Francisco and southern California radio shows to discuss (tout) the book. Over the 17 years the California edition was in print, it alone sold over 265,000 copies in the state, mostly through Costco and other warehouse stores, in addition to nearly a million copies of the other states' editions, until his publisher encountered financial misfortunes and ceased operations.

In recent years, he has self-published state editions in the series as Kindle e-books for each of 34 states and D.C. Each book in the series covers federal and state taxes and business laws that are of primary importance to most small businesses, as well as providing a wealth of practical advice, information and learning acquired over a lifetime career of advising small businesses.

Living in the beautiful red rock country of southern Utah, not far from Zion Canyon, Jenkins loves the clean air, friendly people, and desert climate of Utah, and enjoys looking out his office window at the soaring 1200-foot red cliffs nearby. He has spent much of his spare time in the last few decades, when not on a mountain bike, exploring Indian ruins throughout the Southwest and doing whitewater rafting on rivers from Oregon to Taos and the Grand Canyon. He considers himself lucky to be alive after a terrifying trip through Cataract Canyon during near-record high water back in the 1990's, the inspiration for one of his satirical short stories, "Dead Men Don't Float."

While he loves the desert Southwest, Jenkins still makes regular pilgrimages back to his home state of Louisiana, claiming that "I can survive without Cajun cooking only for so long...."