Accounting Literature.

Abstract This section presents information resources for financial accounting courses. One source mentioned by editor Stephen A. Zeff is articles in the popular financial press such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Business Week, Fortune, Barron's, and so forth. Most often their value lies in the fact that they provoke intellectually curious students to raise questions about how accounting controversies are and might be resolved and provide an antidote to the text which conveys the impression that all of the important issues in financial reporting have already been resolved. Another obvious source is so-called readings books. These can be useful, but they are not always an ideal solution to the problem. Some of the articles in them are pitched at the wrong level, some are hard to integrate in a course because they raise considerations that might better be brought up elsewhere in the course and some are simply too long or too poorly written to hold students' interest. The first is textbooks used to introduce law students to accounting. The teaching approach used in these books differs sharply from that found in most business schools. Accounting instructors looking for ideas on new ways to present the subject as well as those just looking for material to supplement more traditional courses should have a look at these texts.