Customer Reviews

Financial Accounting (Fourth Edition) with CD-Rom

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Don't buy this book as a self-study guide to financial accounting. It is an excellent textbook for a course or, if you have already studied bookkeeping, it is the perfect book to show you how financial accounting information is useful for managerial and investment decisions. The real world emphasis provides a great context. The authors have struck a good balance between acccounting processes and the use of accounting information.

The book is a good choice for an accounting course or the perfect next step for self-study after bookeeping but you'll be unhappy with it if you looking for an overly simplistic approach to accounting.

Libby et al try to sell this book to schools ranging from Harvard Business School down to undergraduates at West Texas A & M University, and unfortunately for students, they get their wish with the highest grossing accounting textbook on the market. What results is a text that is far too verbose, and yet simultaneously superficial on regulatory and finance issues, for an elite undergraduate or graduate school student's first go at the subject, as well as a text far too meandering for the attention span of less academically inclined pupils. The specific problems are manifold. First, the examples are less than clear. Second, the attempt to bring in real would cases adds a lot of volume to each chapter with little to no actual relation to the topic at hand (e.g. five pages about Papa John's Pizza to give one or two relevant lines about their operations). Third, redundancy occurs at times to the point of causing students to miss actual salient differences (e.g. and not appropriately denoting problems where they occur). Fourth, a color scheme / layout from hell!

The fundamental sales pitch behind this book is that it's, "a text students and teachers can agree on." Frankly, I would rather see more professors opting for a tax type text than might overwhelm brighter students in content, and force them to read actively to discern what is relevant, while simultaneously selecting a more outline oriented format for the majority of undergraduates using a single case for clarity throughout a chapter (and in the questions). Both texts exist already.

Had this as a textbook in my first financial accounting graduate course. Very well done. It actually covers A LOT for a one semester course. I have never seen so many exercises, example problems, and projects presented in one text book. The CD, plus web site, also offer more example problems. Be prepared to spend a LOT of time solving problems... which I think is the only way to really learn accounting. You'll love this textbook, but, be prepared to work hard and spend time.

Purchased this book for some self-study when starting out my own business, and found it clear and easy to understand. So far I haven't come across any applications in my own business that I haven't been able to solve through referencing this book, aside from some tax consequences that are better solved by referencing a small business tax deduction book such as Deduct It! by Nolo.

This book is very easy to understand, very well-written, great explanations, makes accounting a lot easier to grasp.

This book uses a lot of "real companies' data" (including the boycotted clothing retailer and recently bankrupt airline). The real companies' data come with a lot of advertisements, which is kind of disturbing.

For something as mechanical as accounting, this textbook does an ok job in teaching it, even though there are certain areas that it lack (good comprehensive examples, for one). However, the end of chapter problems are pretty bad. They'll ask you things that the book doesn't even mention until later on, and most the problems are extremely monotonous. (yes accounting is boring, but they can at least TRY make it a little more interesting). There are better intro to accounting text books out there

I was expecting a hardcover book and got a softcover instead. It is already torn up pretty badly, transporting it back and forth to class.

* out of *****