Description
Book SynopsisThe world certainly suffers no shortage of accounting texts. The many out there help readers prepare, audit, interpret and explain corporate financial statements. What has been missing is a book offering context and discussion for divisive issues such as taxes, debt, options, and earnings volatility. King addresses the
why of accounting instead of the
how, providing practitioners and students with a highly readable history of U.S. corporate accounting.
More Than a Numbers Game: A Brief History of Accounting was inspired by Arthur Levitt''s landmark 1998 speech delivered at New York University. The Securities and Exchange Commission chairman described the too-little challenged custom of earnings management and presaged the breakdown in the US corporate accounting three years later.
Somehow, over a one-hundred year period, accounting morphed from a tool used by American railroad managers to communicate with absent British investors into an enabler of corporate fr
Table of Contents
About the Cover ix
Preface xi
1 Double-Entry 1
2 Railroads 13
3 Taxes 23
4 Costs 41
5 Disclosure 55
6 Standards 71
7 Science 89
8 Inflation 103
9 Volatility 115
10 Intangibles 131
11 Debt 145
12 Options 159
13 Earnings 171
14 SOX 187
15 Epilogue 207
Notes 213
Bibliography 223
Index 235
About the Author 242
