1st Avenue

The 3rd edition helped me through a particularly undecided point in life, and picking up the text made a huge difference. So in honor of that 3rd edition all those years ago, this edition gets 5 stars.

It takes a certain personality to enjoy accounting, because there's a lot of tedious, repetitive work that you just gotta get through. From what I've seen, if you don't have that personality, you're more likely to burn out early and end up switching careers a few years down the road, or burn out even before you get started. So it's in your best interest to find out early and decide accordingly if going into accounting is the right way to go, is what I tell undergrads every time a few from my alma mater come a-knocking.

Although a lot has changed between the 3rd and 7th, such as tax and corporate regulations, the concepts and teaching methods in the book are still the same. Balance sheets and income statements are still there to numb your mind. More recent business models and examples, such as Facebook and Google, are used to keep things fresh and up to date. Other than that, it's still the same textbook, only modified to fit the ever-growing shapes and sizes of businesses.

There's an 8th edition just released this summer that comes with a modified online program that's supposed to be the talk of the town. It sounds interesting enough. I think I might seek it out just to mess around with the program, and also to see how much I remember--or have forgotten--without reading the text first.

Recommended for: no one I know around these parts, but of course everyone is welcome to try