Reddit reviews Financial Accounting, 7th Edition

I felt the same way, so I went and found a bunch. Here they are:

Start Your Business is the single greatest book on starting a business. It is a pretty comprehensive overview of all aspects. I would definitely recommend it.

Finance:

Financial Accounting is a decent text. The usefulness of financial accounting in general is quite limited for an entrepreneur though. The techniques are mainly used by outside parties to evaluate companies, whether for investing or lending. But it can be useful in that it gives a metric for how your company is doing.

Managerial Accounting is a good book. The subject matter is extremely important and should definitely be learned. Get a book on managerial accounting.

Marketing:

Marketing Management is a really good text for an overview of marketing. One of the best.

Most marketing texts are smaller and not textbooks like you're looking for. There are some detailed texts that go into complicated calculations related to marketing decisions. Go check them out. It's like marketing science or something like that.

Business Law:

Business law is not really worth going into extreme detail. So a good book is The Entrepreneur's Guide to Business Law .


Final Note: It's important to note that it makes way more sense to just get into business and learn as you go. You could spend years learning from every text possible and get nowhere.

This one so you can actually learn how to keep track of your money. All the books I've seen listed here so far are just inspirational garbage, with little to no practical knowledge.

You misinterpreted my remark. I did not ignore your source, but I admittedly did not read it in its entirety, not did I read each citation in the document. I will edit this past to include a list of useful books when I return home.

Edit: The reason why commercial banks create the illusion of an inflated monetary supply is that certain low-risk investments (demand deposits, treasury bills, and commercial paper to name a few) are grouped as cash on financial statements. Thus, if you were to add up all of the "cash" recorded in every company and individual's "balance sheet," you would find that the total exceeds that of the total monetary supply. The reason for this is that all of these assets share the same characteristics. They are highly liquid, and fungible. Distinguishing these assets from cash is immaterial in every way; it would provide no additional useful information to stakeholders, and would be costly to report. For more information on these accounting principles, consult Financial Accounting.

Commercial banks (which I will later distinguish from Investment banks) have a very well defined business model. Through a combination of equity and semi-permanent liability funding, they make loans with varying degrees of risk (E.G. car loans and mortgages). Deposits in these types of institutions can be revoked at any time, thus the name demand deposit, the deposit will be refunded on demand. These are the types of banks you are talking about. This type of financing is substantially similar to financing options available to corporations, especially commercial paper. For more information on Corporate Finance, consult Ross. For more information on treasury management, consult Bragg.

I get where you are coming from. A lot of people want to blame banks for the recent recession. I think there is an argument to be made that investment banks inadequately estimated and reported risks in certain investments. But it is important to distinguish commercial banks from investment banks. Commercial banks take deposits from customers, and provide low risk loans to generate revenue. Depositors have very little control over the investments involved, and commercial banks are required to maintain accounts at the federal reserve, and maintain a reserve of cash to refund deposits. Depositor's accounts are insured by the FDIC (in the States). These accounts are reported as cash. Investment banks take deposits from customers, and invest in a variety of financial instruments. Often, depositors maintain control over the investments made in their accounts. Investors bear the liability for any losses on their accounts, and earn any income generated by the financial instruments. Investors are not guaranteed by the FDIC. These accounts are reported as investments, not cash.

Neither of these types of accounts pull money out of the air, or generate something for nothing. Again, I think there is an argument to be made that investment bankers have, in the past, poorly reported risk exposure. There is also an argument to be made that moral hazard became involved through government institutions such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. There is not, however, room to argue that banks are some sort of magical institutions which have any special powers that you or I do not. If you want to argue that banks are bad, blame investment banks for inadequate risk disclosure. Blaming commercial banks for the recent recession is a bit like blaming Netflix for the collapse of Enron.

Hey, I just finished reading Financial Accounting by Robert Libby (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0078111021/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) as my first Accounting textbook, and was wondering if you had another textbook like book to recommend I move on to next? I'll probably read Quality of Earnings in tandem, unless you feel I'd get more out of it when I have a better sense of Accounting in general.