"This is an authoritative work which deserves to be read widely. Readers with accounting backgrounds who do not regard themselves as historians or even as interested in history will gain from it unexpected insights into the present state of corporate financial reporting and how it evolved, or, to echo Anthony Hopwood’s memorable phrase ‘how accounting became what it was not’." — Geoffrey Whittington (2020), Cambridge Centre for Finance, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, appearing in Accounting and Business Research.