A review of Nohora García’s “understanding Mattessich and Ijiri: a study of accounting thought”

In her well-researched book, Professor Nohora García offers a refreshing and in-depth look into the glorious past of accounting theorists and their search for answers to above questions posed by the esteemed elders.  The book “Understanding Mattessich and Ijiri: A Study of Accounting Thought” represents the 21st entry of the Studies of Development of Accounting Thought Series, edited by Professor Gary Previts of the Case Western Reserve University and is published by Emerald Publishing, Bingley, UK in the year 2018.Even within the accounting history domain, Professor García’s book takes on an unusual intellectual journey, let alone in the broader accounting scholarly arena. Her work is unusual in at least two dimensions. First, the book’s choice of Mattessich and Ijiri as the two accounting scholars to study poses a formidable challenge because the denseness of these two scholars’ work both in terms of their shared tendencies toward abstraction and their scientific-philosophical orientation. Second, her work singles out one book each from the vast libraries of these two prolific scholars.