Financial Accounting Theory and Analysis: Text Readings and Cases, Eighth Edition

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Summary: A review of Accounting Theory text
Review: In my opinion, this is an outstanding text. It is easy to read and it covers all the important areas of accouning theory. In my view, this text eliminates the need for the student to study sentences trying to understand what is being said. The writing is clear and straight to the point. Thus, one can concentrate on learning, not trying to unscramble sentences for meaning. If you are looking for an accounting theory text, give this one a look-see. My guess is that you will like what you read. Like all theory texts, however, this one does NOT come with much material to assist an instructor (e.g., no test bank, no transparencies to assist in teaching, etc.). About the only thing I found was an accompanying booklet that gives answers to "cases" that are in given for each chapter. However, this is not a serious drawback, in my view. Because of skimpy supporting material, I would think that authors would notice this and "corner the market" by trying to please educators. Given the excellence of this text, my guess is that ample supporting materials would put this text in lots of classrooms. But that is just my opinion.

Rating:
Summary: Well presented and simple to understand. But lack.....
Review: This book has presented the Accounting Theory in a simple to understand manner. It is useful for those who need to acquire simple to understand theories in the FASB. Unfortunetly, the book does not go into the explaining of the many theories in details, eg. the prescriptive and descriptive theories.

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Summary: A shamefully badly written book
Review: Unfortunately, the professor of my accounting theory course assigned this book as the sole textbook for the class. Since this book is wholly inadequate for studying accounting theory, I had to use other books to properly prepare for the tests. The book purports to describe accounting theory - i.e., the purpose and rationale behind accounting practices - but is largely a very badly written survey of current accounting standards. Even those areas that do describe aspects of accounting theory are so poorly written that the book is sometimes rendered incomprehensible. The book's one paragraph description of "enterprise theory," for example, is unintelligible without outside reference. The lack of copyediting is also glaringly obvious; the text itself has multiple punctuation errors and the authors constantly shift tenses, often within a single sentence. In other instances the authors even shift between topics: they describe one topic for a paragraph or two, shift to another topic, and finally shift back to the first, referring to the first paragraphs as if the intervening paragraph did not exist. There are many other problems with this book, but since it would take too much space to than list them here, I will simply advise potential readers to avoid this book if at all possible. It will teach them nothing about accounting theory. The authors and the publishers should be ashamed to have their names on this book.