The Reckoning

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Whether building a road or fighting a war, leaders from ancient Mesopotamia to the present have relied on financial accounting to track their state s assets and guide its policies Basic accounting tools such as auditing and double entry bookkeeping form the basis of modern capitalism and the nation state Yet our appreciation for accounting and its formative role throughout history remains minimal at best and we remain ignorant at our peril The 2008 financial crisis is only the most recent example of how poor or risky practices can shake, and even bring down, entire societies.In The Reckoning, historian and MacArthur Genius Award winner Jacob Soll presents a sweeping history of accounting, drawing on a wealth of examples from over a millennia of human history to reveal how accounting has shaped kingdoms, empires, and entire civilizations The Medici family of 15th century Florence used the double entry method to win the loyalty of their clients, but eventually began to misrepresent their accounts, ultimately contributing to the economic decline of the Florentine state itself In the 17th and 18th centuries, European rulers shunned honest accounting, understanding that accurate bookkeeping would constrain their spending and throw their legitimacy into question And in fact, when King Louis XVI s director of finances published the crown s accounts in 1781, his revelations provoked a public outcry that helped to fuel the French Revolution When transparent accounting finally took hold in the 19th Century, the practice helped England establish a global empire But both inept and willfully misused accounting persist, as the catastrophic Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the Great Recession of 2008 have made all too clear.A masterwork of economic and political history, and a radically new perspective on the recent past, The Reckoning compels us to see how accounting is an essential instrument of great institutions and nations and one that, in our increasingly transparent and interconnected world, has never been vital. New Read The Reckoning [ by ] Jacob Soll [ Kindle ePUB or eBook ] – kino-fada.fr There are plenty of people in the world who d say that history is boring There are probably evenpeople who d say that accounting is worse So a book about the history of accounting, as an actual CPA said to me, is never going to be a best seller And while that may be true, this history of accounting was mostly informative, sometimes exciting, and at the end, downright inspiring That s because the author frames it as a tool of transparency with the power to topple corruption in governmen There are plenty of people in the world who d say that history is boring There are probably evenpeople who d say that accounting is worse So a book about the history of accounting, as an actual CPA said to me, is never going to be a best seller And while that may be true, this history of accounting was mostly informative, sometimes exciting, and at the end, downright inspiring That s because the author frames it as a tool of transparency with the power to topple corruption in government and business.Double entry accounting was invented by a Florentine monk in the Renaissance era He was the first Westerner to adopt Arabic numerals instead of the Roman, so it was really the beginning of mathematics as we know it, at least in the Western world But revolutionary as it was, I couldn t help but wonder about other cultures through these for thes...Adding this to my list because of an op ed, No Accounting Skills No Moral Reckoning I found it both fascinating In Renaissance Italy, merchants and property owners used accounting not only for their businesses but to make a moral reckoning with God, their cities, their countries and their families The famous Italian merchant Francesco Datini wrote In the Name of God and Profit in his ledger books Merchants like Datini and later Benjamin Franklin kept moral account books, too, tallying th Adding this to my list because of an op ed, No Accounting Skills No Moral Reckoning I found it both fascinating In Renaissance Italy, merchants and property owners used accounting not only for their businesses but to make a moral reckoning with God, their cities, their countries and their families The famous Italian merchant Francesco Datini wrote In the Name of God and Profit in his ledger books Merchants like Datini and later Benjamin Franklin kept moral account books, too, tallying their sins and good acts the way t...there was potential for an interesting book here accounting is indeed a powerful set of ideas, little known by the wider population, and i don t doubt that as the book s blurb says different understandings of it have shaped how empires, nations, ethnic groups have fared an accountancy professor at a good US university, well connected long list of ...Required reading for anyone working with financial statementsThis was a cool look into the accounting connected to a lot of famous eras and events in world history It was interesting to see how big of a role accounting played in the success or collapse of nations ...Who would have thought the history of double entry bookkeeping could be so interesting A terrific read about how rulers, government and shonks have taken the art of accounting and turned it into a force of manipulation More relevant now in these times of algorithmic trading, futures,...Extremely well researched and presented I learned many things about accounting that I couldn t have imagined, the association between financial and moral balance in previous times for instance I also learned that much in our modern day is dependent on this boring and under appreciated subject.I m actually a little amazed I not only finished an entire book about the history of accounting, but that I understood it and even liked it My relationship with mathematics is somewhattroubled.Great book by Jacob Soll.657.09 S688 2014

The Reckoning
  • 10 March 2017
  • Hardcover
  • 312 pages
  • 0465031528
  • Jacob Soll
  • The Reckoning