It's always fun to read a book where in the writing of it the author learns something to confound the expectations with which she began it. In the penultimate chapter White writes:
Before I started researching it, I had intended to name this chapter 'The rise and fall of a profession'. It was to chart the glorious rise of accounting in the second half of the twentieth century to the lofty heights of the professional Olympus and then trace its collapse in the wake of scandals like Enron and WorldCom, and in Australia, HIH, ONe.Tel and ABC Learning. However, not only has no such fall ensued but it turns out that these accounting scandals are a regular feature in the landscape of accounting. They are as old as the profession itself...And they all stem from significant accounting misstatements orchestrated by influential senior managers.
