Geoffrey Whittington is a Senior Research Associate of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Judge Business School, Cambridge and a founding member of the International Accounting Standards Board, London (2001–6). He is the author of numerous publications and essays on financial accounting, including The Elements of Accounting (Cambridge, 1992) and The Debate on Inflation Accounting with David Tweedie (Cambridge, 1984).

• 1. An introduction to the measurement problem in financial accounting; 2. Fundamentals; 3. Historical cost accounting; 4. Current value accounting 1; 5. Inflation and the general price level; 6. Current value systems 2: capital maintenance concepts and real terms accounting; 7. Review; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

'A tour de force. Professor Whittington, Britain's premier accounting academic, has produced a masterpiece. Having been an active participant through both the 'Golden Age' of accounting theory and the inflation accounting controversy and a standard setter for many years thereafter, he looks back on the twentieth-century theories of income measurement, efforts to implement aspects of them and the effect (replete with references) of the huge volume of research on the direction of accounting. Written in his easy style, this book will become a classic - essential reading for teachers, theorists, researchers and accounting policy makers.' Sir David Tweedie, Chairman, International Valuation Standards Council