The world suffers no shortage of accounting texts. The many I’ve read over the past 25 years have helped me audit, prepare, use, and explain corporate financial statements. Missing in this lettered journey has been a work that provides context for accounting’s six divisive issues: inflation, volatility, intangibles, debt, options, and earnings. A brief history of accounting can fill this void. Students and practitioners study textbooks designed to explain the how’s of accounting. Readers consequently learn the mechanics of, say, calculating earnings per share without understanding that statement preparers and users often work at crosspurposes to cope with nonrecurring items and costs of equity-based compensation. This short book’s contribution is to discuss the.
