Book reviews; [News items];

              Bulletin HASKINS & SELLS 23
Book Reviews
Couchman, Charles B. The Balance
Sheet. (New York, The Journal of Ac­countancy,
Inc., 1924. 288 p.)
The essentials of a good book on ac­counting
are that it shall contain an ade­quate
discussion of the subject held out by
the title; that the exposition shall be clear,
the arguments and theories reasonably
sound, the type sufficiently large to make
reading easy; and that the book shall have
an index which facilitates the use of the in­formation
which the book contains
The book under review herein meets all
of these requirements; hence it may be
adjudged a good book. But a general en­dorsement
of this character is scarcely
sufficient to put the reader in a position to
decide whether or not the book is worth
having.
Many books on accounting have been
written during the past decade. All of them
have had pages and pages devoted to a dis­cussion
of the balance sheet. None of
them contains a discussion at once as clear,
terse, and convincing as the book now be­ing
considered. Anyone who knows the
author and has heard him talk cannot have
failed to be impressed with his clear, force­ful
manner of expressing his thoughts.
In this book on the balance sheet the per­sonality
of the author speaks through
every line. His clear expression is but the
evidence of his clear thinking. But withal
the book suggests more the setting down of
thoughts arising in the mind of a practical
accountant rather than an attempt at scien-