Financial Accounting

Rating:
Summary: Excellent but not for the beginner
Review: I realize that this is an accounting book, but I feel it is very hard to follow. Someone without a knowledge of accounting could get very confused just by reading the first chapter. I could heve thought of many other things I would rather have spent $$.. on. There are better books out there.

Rating:
Summary: Good Introduction to Accounting
Review: I started out with practically no knowledge of accounting - this book did a very impressive job of introducing me to the various concepts. I can now read and understand the financial statements put out by the companies. Our professor used this book very extensively - he would talk about a topic and then point out the page numbers where the authors had written about that topic.
This is a pretty good reference too - I have refered to the book many times when I see certain accounting terms used in the press. The authors have kept the explanation very concise and have inserted examples that capture the essence of the explanation.
I found the book to be very expensive though.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty darn good, but a bit overwhelming for the beginner.
Review: I used this book for my Financial Accounting I course I took this past Spring working towards my Bachelors degree. This was in the first accounting course and I really didn't know too much about accounting beforehand. While the book overall is a good text and full of helpful information and examples, the first chapter or two were totally useless because they approached accounting pragmatically and tried to cover too many fundamentals too soon. Accounting is not an easy subject and theres no easy way to get started with it. However, my professor (who had used the book before) skipped over the first couple chapters and taught us the fundamentals using her own method which did work very well and then the rest of the book made more sense. At times it seems the book might cover a topic or circumstance in only one or two sentences and then will have a problem or two that deal more extensively with that short concept. The only reason I could think they did this was to stimulate creativity and learning and force the student to figure out how to mold the various principles to fit a particular "new" situation rather than just have you memorize some rules. Some might not like this method...

Rating:
Summary: Fin accounting for dummies
Review: This is an excellent introductory textbook.